Talking Migration

In September this year, Swedish people are heading to vote in a general election. One of the questions at stake is the country’s increasingly harsh migration and asylum policies. In this episode: Torun Elsurd: Associate Professor at the Department of Social Work at Linnaeus University and co-author of Hope and Asylum: Everyday Life, Precarity and Social Change. https://lnu.se/en/staff/torun.elsrud...

Migrants Rights Network recently published a report on the extent and nature of immigration raids in the UK. This episode interviews two of its co-authors. In this episode: Julia Tinsley-Kent, Head of Policy and Communications Lauren Fernandes, Policy and Campaigns Assistant https://migrantsrights.org.uk/about/our-people/ To read the report 'Immigration Raids: An Anatomy of Racist Intimidation': h...

What role do memories play in displacement? Are memories political? In this episode, we discuss questions of memory, war, exile and building a new home. In this episode: Ammar Azzouz, Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford and the Principal Investigator of Slow Violence and the City https://www.geog.ox.ac.uk/staff/aazzouz.html Talking Migration is supp...

In this episode: Guy Aitchison, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at Loughborough University https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/staff/guy-aitchison/#tab3 If you need help or someone to talk to: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/seeking-help-for-a-mental-health-problem/mental-health-helplines/ Article discusse...

Perhaps one of the most contentious questions within debates around migration is how the movement of people across international borders affect levels of crime. Simply asking the question carries certain assumptions about the relevance of someone’s migration background to whether or not they are more at risk of committing or being the victim or crime. What does the criminological research tell us...

The Danish parliament has voted in favour of seeking bilateral agreements with third countries to process and protect asylum seekers there instead of in Denmark. The practical and legal obstacles are many, as are worries about the protection of asylum seekers' human rights. In this episode: Nikolas Tan, Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for Human Rights https://www.humanrights.dk/staff/nik...

EU citizens in the UK had to apply for settled status by the end of June. What does this entail and what happened to those who failed to do so? Why are employers checking the status of their employees? In this episode: Olivia Vicol, co-founder and Director of Work Rights Centre - https://www.workrightscentre.org/ Talking Migration is supported by the University of Manchester

The UK government has published the New Plan for Immigration policy paper and a consultation period ran from late March to early May. The policy paper describes reforms to the asylum system and other parts of the immigration system. In this episode, we discuss the plans, their implications and criticism. In this episode: William Wheeler, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Manchester htt...

In 2017, Dina Nayeri, an American-Iranian author, wrote an article for the Guardian with the title ‘The ungrateful refugee: We have no debt to repay’. Last year, she published the book ‘The Ungrateful Refugee: What Immigrants Never Tell You’, which tells her own and several other refugees’ stories while exploring themes of refugee life. In this episode: Dina Nayeri http://www.dinanayeri.com/ Book:...

Every year, people die trying to reach safety and a better future in a different country. But how many and who they are has been mostly unknown. The Missing Migrants Project, run by IOM, has started to collect data on who the people are who have lost their lives while migrating. In this episode: Kate Dearden, Project Officer https://missingmigrants.iom.int/ Talking Migration is supported by the Un...

The UNHCR plays a critical role in the protection of refugees. Yet while the UNHCR seeks to pressure states into providing aid and protection to refugees, it is also funded by states. What does this tension mean? How has the role of the UNHCR changed and how does it brand itself? In this episode: Jeff Crisp, Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford https://www.r...

In her new book, No Refuge, Serena Parekh describes what she calls the second refugee. This crisis means that the vast majority of refugees cannot find safety or conditions for a life with dignity. Parekh argues that this amounts to a structural injustice and she joins this episode to discuss her book. In this episode: Serena Parekh, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University in...

Covid-19 has presented challenges for everyone, but some people are more affected than others. People with disabilities have not been able to socially distance to the extent that others can, and trying to do so may come with extra costs. For disabled asylum seekers, who in the UK are prevented from working and earning a living, this presents additional and significant challenges. In this episode:...

Many people believe that some or all immigration laws are unjust. Does that imply that citizens and migrants don’t have to obey those laws? Do some of us even have a duty to resist them? Is it possible to believe that migrants don’t have to comply with immigration laws even if you think states have a right to exclude immigrants? In this episode: Matthew Lister, Senior Lecturer in Deakin Law School...

Professor David Owen, University of Southampton, talks about his latest book: What Do We Owe to Refugees? https://www.southampton.ac.uk/politics/about/staff/dowen.page To get the book: https://www.wiley.com/en-gb/What+Do+We+Owe+to+Refugees%3F-p-9781509539741 Talking Migration is supported by the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield and produced by Clara...

The Coronavirus pandemic has led to restrictions on movement for everyone. How has the politics and policy of migration and asylum in Europe been affected? What might the long-term impact on Europe’s asylum policy be? In this episode: Catherine Woollard, Secretary General of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles: www.ecre.org ECRE’s informationsheet on Covid-19: https://www.ecre.org/informat...

What role does colonialism play in contemporary asylum and migration politics? Do European asylum and migration policies reflect colonial power relations, or is colonialism something that exits in the past whilst different logics govern contemporary migration policies? And can the link between colonialism and asylum and migration even tell us something about Brexit? In this episode: Lucy Mayblin,...

One of the key policy goals of President Trump has been to curb migration from Mexico. But how is this received at the Mexican end? What policies have actually been agreed with, or imposed on, Mexico by the Trump administration? In this episode: Laura Carlsen, Director of the Americas Program at the Center for International Policy. Find more information about Carlsen's work here: https://www.inter...

The Refugee Convention classes anyone as a refugee who fears persecution because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. This does not include one group of people who are frequently persecuted for who they are, namely LGBTQ+ people. Yet many countries do recognise sexual orientation as a ground of asylum, at least in theory. In practice,...

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was adopted at the end of 2018. Will is safeguard migrants' human rights, or undermine state sovereignty? In this episode: Elspeth Guild, Professor of Law at Queen Mary University of London https://www.qmul.ac.uk/law/staff/guild.html Tugba Basaran, Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Global Human Movement University of Cambridge ht...

This episode was recorded last week with volunteers and researchers working on Samos. They tell about dreadful conditions, a third sector filling governance gaps and discuss alternative policies. The podcast is supported by the Department of Politics and the Migration Research Group, the University of Sheffield. In this episode: Giulia Cicoli, Co-Founder Still I Rise https://www.stillirisengo.org/...

There are many calls for reforming the way the world protects, or fails to protect, refugees. Some have suggested that the UN Refugee Convention is out-dated, others that the right to seek asylum should be abolished or that asylum claims should be processed off-shore. At the same time, the UNHCR has been drafting a Global Compact on Refugees, promising to increase global cooperation on refugee pro...

The images of children in cages, separated from their parents, at the US-Mexico border have upset people across the world. Part of a so called 'zero-tolerance' policy against 'illegal' migration, everyone crossing the border, even to apply for asylum, become subject of criminal prosecution. To facilitate this, almost 2000 children have been separated from their parents. But why is this happening n...

Public and policy debates about immigration in most parts of the world are pursued on the assumption that states have the right to exclude immigrants, if they so wish, perhaps with the exception of refugees. The main questions are how states can manage migration - who and how many immigrants a state should let in. But do states really have this right, morally, to exclude others from settling on th...

Many people express and urge others to stand in solidarity with refugees. In 2016, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke about the 65 million forcibly displaced in the world, addressing the UNHCR Executive Committee. He said: ‘The numbers are staggering. Each one represents a human life. But this is not a crisis of numbers. It is a crisis of solidarity.’ But, what does it mean to stand in sol...