What does the characterisation of those from Europe’s east as migrants by politicians and in some corners of the media make visible about the politics of migration? What is distinctive about the ways in which they are migratised and racialised? And what does this offer to understandings of racism and racialisation? We’re joined by Aleks Lewicki (University of Sussex) to discuss how critical race theory and postcolonial scholarship can deepen our understandings of repertoires of racism as these play out between ‘Europeans’. Presenter Michaela Benson explores how borders within Europe shifted over the course of the twentieth century. Podcast researcher George Kalivis goes back in the archive to consider the 2003 EU Accession Treaty. And Aleks introduces us to her work about how those from Europe’s east are migratised and why we need to carefully consider what their racialisation makes visible about the distribution of power, past and present, within Europe. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?

In this episode we cover …

1 Unequal Europes and unequal Europeans

2 The 2003 EU accession treaty

3 Capitalism and the formation of European nation-states

Quote

‘Postcolonial approaches draw our attention to the longer durée of precarious labour mobility … there were parallel processes of extractivism occurring. Where Europe ventured out as part of colonialism, and positioned the colonies subsequently as peripheries, at the same time, there was also an extraction of resources and cheap labour from Europe's east, which thereby became positioned as a semi periphery. If we consider these longer histories, it becomes apparent what this meant for the region … generation after generation of people had to at some point, move west to make a living and engaged in various forms of precarious labour mobility’. —Aleks Lewicki

Find out more about … Aleks’ research and her paper on the ambiguous racialisation of ‘Eastern Europeans’

If you liked this episode, check out our previous episodes on this topic with Bolaji Balogun and Marius Turda on  European identities, Nando Sigona on EU citizenship, and Manuela Boatcă on citizenship and Global Social Inequalities

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are? On our website, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

There is nothing politically neutral about classifying and categorising people as migrants. This is a process through which certain individuals and populations are defined as migrants, whether they have crossed borders or not. It has political consequences and impacts for those who find themselves labelled as such. In this episode we turn to this always-political question to consider what this means for how we study and research migration. Researcher George Kalivis goes back to the 1970s to consider the Grunwick industrial dispute. Presenter Michaela Benson considers what the UK’s post-Brexit immigration system, makes visible about class and migration. And Bridget Anderson Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol joins us to talk about why we need to turn our attention to how the distinctions between citizens and migrants are made and to what ends, and what conceptual tools might be useful in excavating the connections between migrants and citizens as we consider the always-political question ‘Who is a migrant?’

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?

In this episode we cover …

1 Migrantisation and racialisation

2 Grunwick Dispute

3 Post-Brexit immigration regime

Quote

Given that ‘migrant’ is a social as well as a legal construction, then we as researchers are part of making the subordinated character of the migrants … migrants and migration, migrant and citizenship are not just neutral descriptors, they make power relations between each other and between a person and state.

—Bridget Anderson

Find out more about …

Bridget’s research and Migration Mobilities Bristol

Read Bridget’s work on methodological denationalism and migrantisation

We also recommend Alyosxa Tudor’s work on racialisation and migratisation

Michaela’s research on Brexit and the stratification of British people in France

The Grunwick industrial dispute from the Working Class Movement Library and the Striking Women Module

Call to action

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Visit us via our website, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

All eyes have been on Qatar because of the World Cup. And with it, attention to the poor working conditions and treatment of migrant construction workers. We go beyond the headlines with İdil Akıncı-Pérez (University of Edinburgh) to explore the back story to these issues. We look in depth at how the Gulf States approach migration and citizenship, from the Kafala sponsorship system to restrictions on citizenship which mean that only 10% of the resident population have citizenship. We move beyond the suggestion of the Gulf States as exceptional to consider instead how their approach converges and diverges from migration-citizenship regimes closer to home, and what this makes visible about global migration and citizenship regimes.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode on the Who do we think we are? website.

In this episode we cover …

1. Kafala and labour conditions
2. History of citizenship and migration in the Gulf
3. Legal precarity across the life course

Quote

"If you hold nationality of a country with ongoing political conflict and violence where do you go if you lose your temporary visa that is linked to employment which means you have to find a different place to live? It is really important to look at legal status together with nationality to understand inequality." — İdil Akıncı-Pérez

Find out more about …

Our guest İdil Akıncı-Pérez and her work and follow her on twitter

Our headline for this episode from Al Jazeera

We also loved this episode about Qatar and the World Cup from one of our favourite podcasts, NPR’s Throughline

Call to action

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms.

To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Who is unquestionably European? From Brexit to the war in Ukraine, this question has come to the fore as people of colour have found themselves disproportionately questioned as they try to exercise their rights as European citizens. We’re joined by Bolaji Balogun (University of Sheffield) and Marius Turda (Oxford Brookes) to discuss the longer history of migration between Europe the UK, how this history interplays with the development of immigration controls in the UK (and elsewhere), and the development of European identities from the early twentieth century to the present-day.

George and Michaela consider the disproportionate challenges that European people of colour have faced in securing their post-Brexit status through the EU settled status scheme. In our explainer, Michaela explores the social and political context that led to the development of the 1905 Aliens Act. And in conversation, Bolaji and Marius introduce us to the role of eugenics and race science in the development of early immigration controls in the UK and how this set the stage for the racialised exclusions at the heart of contemporary immigration controls and governance practices across Europe.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?

In this episode we cover …

1. The Aliens Act 1905
2. Eugenics, race science and immigration controls
3. European identities and Whiteness

Quote

The ways in which migration and citizenship are processes of inclusion and exclusion at the same time. As a citizen you think you're actually free to move around. But the same process of citizenship has been used to actually exclude and to reduce also, what you can have access to and what you canot. And actually eugenics provided tools for that to actually happen. —Bolaji Balogun

We attach so much importance to historical myths of origins. And those continue to fuel, often negatively, fantasies of belonging. And white supremacy and whiteness is based on the fantasy of belonging, these ideas have never gone away. — Marius Turda

Find out more about …

Bolaji and his work, follow him on Twitter, and read his paper Race, blood,and nation

Marius’s work on The Eugenics Podcast, follow him on Twitter, and read his paper Legacies of Eugenics

Dahaba Ali Hussen’s struggle for EU settled status

Black Europeans, the organisation documenting systemic racism in the EUSS scheme

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are? On our website, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

In July 2022 the news broke that Sir Mo Farah, four times Olympian for Team GB, had been trafficked to the UK as a child. The headlines enhanced public understandings of trafficking. They brought into the frame the children forced into domestic servitude and the circumstances which mean that their situations may not come to light. Hosts Ala Sirriyeh and Michaela Benson are joined by Dr Hannah Lewis, University of Sheffield to discuss what trafficking is and its relationship to modern slavery and forced labour; public responses to victims of trafficking; and how the Hostile Environment further limits the possibilities of exiting the relationships of exploitation at the heart of trafficking.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode on the Who do we think we are? website

In this episode we cover …

1 Human Trafficking

2 Sir Mo Farah

3 Forced Labour and Domestic Servitude

Quote

... we cannot resolve the problem of severe exploitation in the UK ... without disentangling it from scapegoating of migrants and xenophobic immigration controls. It's not possible to intervene effectively in this area, without tackling the problems that we have in the UK, with immigration controls, and the way in which these are now being woven into everyday life through the hostile environment.

—Hannah Lewis

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find out more about Hannah and her research on the University of Sheffield website

Read her co-authored book Precarious Lives

Our headline for this episode was Sir Mo Farah ‘relieved Home Office won’t take action over citizenship’

Call to action

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.

To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, check out our website, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Who do we think we are? In the early 2000s, with the beginning of the New Labour government, journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown asked this question, calling for a radical reimagining of who was considered as British and outlining her hopes for a new Britain. In this special episode, she joins Michaela Benson in conversation to consider why 20 years later we’re still asking the same question. She draws out the differences between now and then; shifts within the Conservative Party from Thatcher to the present-day; what this means for questions of race, migration and belonging; New Labour, migration and the Iraq War; Meghan Markle; the challenges ahead for keeping hope alive and the small

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 New Labour, immigration and citizenship

2 Conservative Party from Thatcher to the present-day

3 Meghan Markle

Quote

… if Labour is going to do anything meaningful, it needs to be addressing who we are, and who we can be and who we want to be. And use its period in power, not to social engineer, but to tell a proper history, for example, to educate our children differently, maybe to get sections of the media to reflect the country we are not the country they wish we were.

—Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

You can find Yasmin on Twitter or via her column in iNews.

Her book Who do we think we are?

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

For many people, migration is about escaping persecution and state violence. But in the context increasingly criminalisation of migration, state violence may characterise the lives of immigrants. Hosts Ala Sirriyeh and Michaela Benson are joined by Professor Cecilia Menjívar to discuss her work with Central American migrants in the US. She highlights how those taking part in her empirical research from Arizona to Kansas revealed to her the ways in which the infrastructures of immigration enforcement and control in the US shape migrant lives and the parallels they draw in state violence before and after migration. And she stresses the urgent need to consider legal status as an axis of social inequality in contemporary society. 

In this episode we cover …

1. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
2. Legal violence and legal liminality
3. Legal status and social inequalities

Quote

… that brought to me the parallels between life under state terror in Central America, and life under legal terror brought about by immigration enforcement in the United States

• Cecilia Menjívar

Find out more

Find out more about Cecilia’s work on the UCLA website and follow her on Twitter

We recommend her work on Legal Liminality and her co-authored research with Leisy Abrego on Legal Violence

Our headline was this article from the LA Times about US Immigration and Customs enforcement in the shift from Trump to Biden.

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources on our website follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

As people find themselves queueing up at border controls in EU member states, as their passports are stamped, there have been questions about why these things are happening. It’s all because of Brexit, and more specifically, the end of free movement between the UK and EU which means that British citizens are no longer EU citizens. But what do you know about EU citizenship is and isn’t?

In this episode we’re joined by Nando Sigona, Professor in International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham, to talk Brexit, EU citizenship and what this makes visible about British citizenship. Michaela’s explainer offers a whirlwind tour of EU citizenship from the Maastricht Treaty to Brexit, highlighting its emergence in the context of ambitions for European integration and considering what the loss of EU citizenship means for British citizens and their families. George experiences déjà vu as he uncovers how some politicians and parliamentarians in the UK responded to the idea of EU citizenship when it was mooted in 1992. And Nando helps us unpack what we can learn about citizenship from looking at Brexit as a political transition, its impacts on the lives of EU citizens living in the UK but also considering this in the context of racialised bordering practices, past and present, in the UK and EU.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1. The Maastricht Treaty, EU citizenship
2. Freedom of Movement
3. Brexit and EU citizens

Quote

In a sense Brexit was a laboratory for seeing the redefinition and rewriting of citizenship in action but was not new in itself, actually there is almost an institutional memory of how to do these kind of things in the case of Britain.

— Nando Sigona

Find out more about …

Nando and his work here, follow him on Twitter, read his book Within and beyond citizenship

EU families and Eurochildren research

Institute for Research into Refugees, International Migration and Superdiversity

Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit research

This episode’s primary source for Back to the Archive

Michaela’s work Brexit and British citizens in the EU including her paper with Chantelle Lewis

Call to action

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With a new UK cabinet comes a new Home Secretary, Suella Braverman MP former Attorney General. While there has been a lot of focus on her politics, what does this mean for the Home Office and in particular its approach to immigration? Hosts Ala Sirriyeh and Michaela Benson are joined by Colin Yeo, Barrister at Garden Court Chambers and editor of the Free Movement blog, to talk about all this and consider how it sits in the decade-long context of the Hostile Environment. While our headline focusses on her pledge to bring the numbers of people crossing the Channel in small boats to zero, what is going on behind the scenes? Is this more of the same or a new era? And what’s to come?

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 The Hostile Environment

2 The Home Office from Theresa May, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman

3 ID cards, passports and immigration controls

Quote

‘They've got all the tools they need to be as horrible as they like, and you know, All they have to do is change the immigration rules and change regulations. And so I just don't see that they need any primary legislation, but we'll probably see it anyway.’

—Colin Yeo, on the UK’s immigration legislation

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Follow Colin on Twitter

Read Welcome to Britain and What kind of Home Secreatry will Suella Braverman be?

Our headline

May Bulman’s long read on the Hostile Environment

Gwyneth Lonergan’s research on migrant women and maternity care

Mapping Immigration Controversy Project

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

You start a relationship with someone living abroad. As the relationship gets serious, you decide to take the next steps and live together. But there's a border in the way. We’re joined by Ala Sirriyeh, senior lecturer in sociology at Lancaster University to talk about how borders disrupt and remake families, why as a British citizen your non-British family members are not exempt from immigration controls and what this tells us about British citizenship today.

George Kalivis goes back into the archive to look at the secret deportation of Chinese merchant seamen from Liverpool after WW2 and how this shattered families and left many unanswered questions for their wives and mixed-race children left behind. Michaela Benson looks at the 2012 changes to the UK’s immigration rules and their impact on non-British family members, the ‘Surinder Singh’ route which exempted from the UK’s domestic immigration controls for some family members under EU free movement directives. And Ala talks to Michaela about how family migration rules exclude people on the grounds of race and class, and the creative ways in which people try to overcome these in order to simply live together. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

1. The secret deportation of Chinese Merchant Seamen
2. Family Migration Rules 
3. The right to family life, the Surinder Singh Route and Brexit

Quote 

In looking at the impacts of these family migration rules shows us the blurring of the migrant-citizen divide … The kind of hierarchies of citizenship are not simply about being citizen or migrant but are based in much more complex and less stable ways … around a kind of hierarchy around axes of race and class.

— Ala Sirriyeh

Find out more … about Ala and her work here, take a look at her books Politics of Compassion and Inhabiting Borders, and follow her on Twitter. 

Further Resources

Ala’s article ‘All you need is love, and £18,600’.

Dan Hancox’s Guardian articles on The Secret Deportations and how they were coerced to leave by the Home Office. 

Michaela’s co-authored works on marriage-migration to the UK and how Brexit has deepened the inequalities of status within families.

If you liked this episode, you might also enjoy our episodes on English language testing for migration and citizenship and the children denied the right to British nationality.

Call to action

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Over the past few years, international media has been full of reports of protest among them the global Black Lives matter protests, the uprisings in Hong Kong, and Extinction Rebellion. Beyond these social movements, we have seen community action aimed at resisting immigration raids and standing up for trans- and migrant rights among others. These acts of resistance and protest reveal another side to citizenship, where those not granted rights take matters into their own hands and claim their right to claim in their struggles against injustice. 

In this episode, we consider citizenship through a lens onto resistance and protest. Presenter Michaela Benson introduces the idea of citizenship as a site struggle, as always in the making. Podcast researcher George Kalivis reflects on recent protests in London. And we’re joined by Engin Isin, Professor in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, to explain what acts of citizenship are and the potential of these to challenge dominant framings of who counts as a citizen through examples that include Rosa Parks, Tiananmen Square and the Windrush Deportation Scandal 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

1 Acts of citizenship and citizenship struggles

2 Resistance, protest and social movement

3 Rosa Parks, Tiananmen Square and the Windrush Deportation Scandal

Quote 

As long as there was notion of citizenship or some form of the dominant virtue of a dominant person, there was resistance to it, there was never a moment where the alternative of citizens just dropped arms and stopped resisting it, it's impossible to think so that resistance itself is, is hope, but also inspiration. — Engin Isin

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find out more about Engin and his work on citizenship here

We particularly recommend his work on acts of citizenship and the activist citizen

Visit the journal Citizenship Studies

George consulted the 11 June 2002 report in The Observer about resistance to immigration raids in Peckham

Listen to Étienne Balibar talk about the unfinished history of citizenship here

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. 

In June 2022, the headlines in the UK were full of news about the Rwanda plan. As an ECHR ruling halted the first deportation flight scheduled to depart from Rwanda, from the Prince of Wales to the Archbishop of Canterbury it was the high-profile opponents of the scheme to offshore the UK’s responsibilities to those seeking asylum that caught the attention of the press. But this public outpouring of resistance to bordering did not emerge from nowhere. It sits on years of resistance and protest from the grassroots and within local communities. Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow, and Tawona Sitholé (AKA Ganyamatope), Poet-in-Residence for the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network join Michaela and Ala to go beyond the headlines to look into the roles of local communities in resistance to bordering. Taking local community action in Glasgow as a starting point, they explore everyday acts of resistance, the connections between solidarities movements around the UK, and the political potential of poetry and storytelling.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 The Rwanda Deportation Scheme

2 Glasgow and the Kenmure Street Protests

3 Migrant solidarity across the UK

Quote

[I]t isn't the stopping of the Rwanda flight that led to the publication of the Bill of Rights … that bill should have been unthinkable. And it has been thinkable because vested interests wish to see the removal of human rights from large swathes of the population, in the interests of vested in offshored capital, and outsourcing as a way of thinking about human beings and human beings not as human beings, but as human capital.

— Alison Phipps

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Our headline ‘Monarchy, celebrity and clergy’ was published in The Guardian, 14 June 2022

Alison Phipps is on Twitter at The University of Glasgow. Read her thoughts on the Rwanda Plain in this blogpost “The border is a Colonial Wound: The Rwanda Deal and State Trafficking in People” You can also hear more from her here The Tories’ Rwanda plans have failed – what now?

Tawona Sitholé (AKA Ganyamatope) is on Twitter or at Glasgow Refugee, asylum and migrant network. Find more of his work at seeds of thought.

The poems performed in the episode are words and Border crossing in Togo

To learn more about activism in Glasgow we recommend, this article  on ‘The festival of resistance’ a year on from Kenmure Street protests, this article on the protests against the Rwanda plans and this blog on the Glasgow girls and Roza Salih’s journey to becoming a candidate for the Scottish Parliament election.

Call to action

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.

To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

For our first episode swap, we’ve partnered up with Surviving Society, the antiracist podcast that explores the local and global politics of race and class from a sociological perspective. We’re featuring this episode where hosts Chantelle Lewis and Tissot Regis are joined by public historian Aleema Gray to discuss her journey through academia and the initial findings from her PhD project - Bun Babylon: Rastafari movement in Britain.

Exec prod: George Ofori-Addo

Theme music by Joey Penaliggon
Design by Amber Jones Designs

Find out more about Aleema’s research with the Rastafari movement in Britain in her piece for History Workshop. 

Listen to Surviving Society wherever you get your podcasts via pod.link. You can also support them via Patreon and follow them on Twitter and Instagram

In May 2012 Home Secretary Theresa May vowed to create ‘a really hostile environment for illegal migrants’, heralding in a set of policies which require landlords, employers, healthcare workers and others to check people’s immigration documents, which creates a barrier to accessing work, housing, healthcare, banking and other services. Most of these measures were introduced through the Immigration Act 2014 and expanded in the Immigration Act 2016. But what has been the impact of the decade-long political project to make the UK ‘tough on immigration’? 

In this episode Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Zrinka Bralo, CEO Migrants Organise. From a starting point of recent headlines focussed on 10 years of the Hostile Environment, they discuss how this made visible structural racism within the UK, brought borders into the everyday lives of migrants, and how it has become normalised, working insidiously through the language used to talk about migration. From the Rwanda plan and channel crossing pushbacks, to the public welcome of little Amal and outpouring of charity around Grenfell, Zrinka calls for migrant justice and the need to build bridges not walls.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1. The Hostile Environment
2. Everyday bordering
3. Migrant justice

Quote

What happens to immigrants is just a dress rehearsal to what happens to all of us. And if we're not awake, and alert and acting, the human rights are going to be taken and taken away from us, and we're not going to be paying attention.

— Zrinka Bralo

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find Zrinka on Twitter at migrants organise an award winning grassroots migrant justice platform or in this article on ‘Little Amal, Channel deaths and cruelty by design’

For more about the hostile environment:

• Kamila Shamsie’s lecture on a decade of the hostile environment 
• Colin Yeo’s blog 
• ‘Go home, The politics of immigration controversies’ a book by Hannah Jones et al
•  This book by Maya Goodfellow

Our headline ‘Home Office still has no evidence to show hostile environment policy is working, report finds’ by May Bulman was published in The Independent 17 June 2020

Find more from Michaela on the Windrush Deportation Scandal in this episode of Who do we think we are?

To discover more about the concept of everyday bordering we suggest this article by Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and Kathryn Cassidy.

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter,Instagram or Facebook.

Commonplace understandings of citizenship equate it with equality – at least among those holding the same citizenship. But looking the processes by which national citizenships develop shows that gaining equality for some was achieved at the expense of others, who might never be considered as equal. 

How might shifting scale to the global transform how we think about the development of British citizenship? Join us as we explore the relationship between the development of national citizenships and global social inequalities. Presenter Michaela Benson reflects on what is overlooked in the focus on the equalising potential of citizenship. George Kalivis dusts off reports relating to Margaret Thatcher’s visit to India in 1981, and how proposed changes in British nationality legislation were received there. And Michaela’s joined by Manuela Boatcă, Professor in Sociology and Head of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg to discuss how the formation of nation-states and the development of citizenship was caught up in the production of global social inequalities that persist in the present-day. And we discuss a range of examples that include investment citizenship, Brexit, the European Union and much, much more. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

1 Citizenship and the production of global inequalities past and present

2 Gender, race and citizenship

3 Brexit and the European Union

Quote 

What a Western passport does is it grants visa free access to the vast majority of countries in the world. Basically, it's a ticket to global social mobility. Now in turn, it is much more difficult for women for LGBTQ individuals and for racial minorities to escape. The limitations are of the citizenship that they receive at birth, especially when they're born in a poor country. Unlike these investors, they women and feminised others have no option or to get access to visa free travel

— Manuela Boatcă

Find out more

Find out more about Manuela on her website and on Twitter 

Read her paper Thinking Europe Otherwise and her work on the coloniality of citizenship with co-author Julia Roth

Rieko Karatani, Defining British Citizenship

Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain

Gurminder Bhambra, Citizens and Others

Call to action

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

Mass shooting in the US have been headlines news over the past month. The pattern? White gunmen opening fire in supermarkets, schools and public spaces, killing and injuring black, brown and hispanic people going about their daily business. Journalists, commentators and politicians have rallied to try and explain these horrific incidents, identifying the role of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory in motivating the actions of lone shooters. But what do these explanations overlook and shield from view? 

In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Aaron Winter, who researches racism, hate crime, the far right and right-wing extremism and terrorism, to take a close up look at the headlines reporting on shootings in Buffalo, where a white man opened fire in a supermarket in a predominantly black neighbourhood murdering 10 people. We discuss the history of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory and related white supremacist conspiracy theories as they plays out in different historical and political contexts. The problems with the narrative of the ‘lone, white, gunman’. And we consider the relationship between these horrific incidents, structural and institutional racism, and the mainstreaming of illiberal approaches to migration in the US and UK, including thinking about Brexit and the Hostile Environment. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 Mass shootings as racist violence

2 The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and white supremacy

3 Mainstreaming the far right and illiberal political approaches to migration

Quote

Why do they never call it terrorism when white people do it? Well they do. They often do to remove it to compartmentalise it and to remove it from all the mainstream systemic and institutional white supremacy that needs to keep going.

• Aaron Winter

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find Aaron on Twitter or Google Scholar

If you want to find out more about mainstreaming the far right, we recommend his book Reactionary Democracy co-authored with Aurelien Mondon

Our headline Great Replacement: The Conspiracy Theory racist violence by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours was published in Al Jazeera 18 May 2022

You might also be interested in Michaela’s writing on Brexit focussed on the question what’s wrong with the narrative of the left behind

And we also wanted to give some love to this excellent paper by Maria Cecilia Hwang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas about the Atlanta shooting where eight people, predominantly Asian women, were murdered.

Call to action

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.

What is the UK’s Nationality and Borders Act? How does it relate to previous acts concerned with nationality and immigration legislation? What is the back story to some of the central changes that this act introduces? We cover all of this and more in this bumper episode to mark the start of Series 2 of Who do we think we are?

Presenter Michaela Benson introduces the Nationality and Borders Act and how this sits in a longer history of Acts which considers changes to nationality and immigration legislation alongside one another. She also joins podcast researcher George Kalivis in the archive, where they discuss the behind closed doors responses of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about what Britain should do in respect to the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s. We’re joined by Trent Lamont Miller and Dave Varney of the British Overseas Territories Citizenship campaign to discuss the impetus behind this campaign and the journey to get legislation changed to allow the children of British Overseas Territories citizens born outside of marriage abroad to be entitled for this citizenship status. But as our conversation with Fizza Qureshi (CEO of Migrants Rights Network) reveals, the success of this campaign for BOTCs is bittersweet in the context of the predominantly bleak consequences of this act.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1. Nationality and Borders Act
2. Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees
3. British Overseas Territories Citizens
4. Refugee and migrant rights

Quote

When you have no effective safe routes to come to the UK, or where you have those routes, and they're measly, in terms of the numbers that are available to people, or they're really narrow in their scope, I mean, what other ways are people going to have to resort to, apart from getting on a boat to entering the UK?

—Fizza Qureshi, CEO Migrants Rights Network

This just makes no sense to me because my British BOTC father did not marry my foreign born mother ... every child has copies of both parents DNA, they have two sides of the family tree for the UK Government to take a pair of scissors and cut away one part of that DNA and family tree and then say you're not valid, you're not welcome, go away. It's deeply hurtful.— Trent Lamont Miller, BOTC Campaign

Find out more

BOTC Campaign on Twitter and Online

Migrants’ Rights Network Online, Twitter and Instagram

Read more

Rieko Karatani, Britishness Reconsidered

Margaret Thatcher reluctant to give boat people refuge in Britain

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Countries around the world have been quick to crow about the provisions they are putting in place to welcome those displaced by the war in Ukraine. Yet, all might not be what it seems.

In this first episode of Beyond the Headlines, hosts Dr Ala Sirriyeh and Professor Michaela Benson are in conversation with Dr Yvonne Su, York University to examine what the headlines announcing a warm welcome to Ukrainian refugees in Poland and the UK shield from view. We explore how even among those displaced by the war, not everyone has equal access to leaving Ukraine. Race, gender and sexuality can all shape people’s fate at the border, leaving some with only unsafe routes out of the conflict-ridden country.

And we consider the narrative that presents Ukrainians as ‘good refugees’, within the wider context of a politics of migration that otherwise casts many of those seeking new lives abroad as illegitimate and underserving, and within states that have readily deployed deterrents and push backs against migrants.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 Ukraine war and refugees

2 Borders and inequalities

3 ‘Good refugees’

Quote

What everyone is hearing is just the numbers of refugees that Poland's accepting or Germany's accepting, or the UK is not accepting, in this case, but then we don't like you're saying we don't look behind the headlines and into what's happening on the ground.

— Dr Yvonne Su

Find out more

Find Yvonne on Twitter or her website

Read her writing on Poland’s border propaganda and anti-immigration sentiments; the ‘good, bad and ideal’ refugees; and how standard humanitarian responses lead to LGBTQ and trans refugees falling between the cracks.

Our headline ‘How European response to Ukraine refugees differs from UK’ The Guardian, 11 March 2022

Ala’s thoughts on the politics of compassion and the channel crossings

Michaela’s writing (with Professor Nando Sigona) about the UK’s response to and provisions for Ukrainian refugees.

For something a bit different, we recommend this episode of Academic Aunties which features Yvonne in conversation with Dr. Ethel Tungohan about Turning Red.

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Did you know that until 2014 that some of those born overseas to unmarried British citizen fathers were not eligible for citizenship? Or that even when this was amended, the provisions were not extended to those born in similar circumstances to British Overseas Territories Citizens? How would you feel if you were denied the right to nationality because your parents weren’t married when you were born? And what does this tell us about who counts as British? 

In this episode we look at the human face of so-called ‘nationality anomalies’ and the struggles of the children of unmarried parents born overseas to gain equal rights to citizenship and nationality. This is an area of nationality legislation where discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, and parentage come crashing together. We explore how these outdated understandings of parental relationships at the heart of these anomalies sit in a long history of gender discrimination within nationality legislation. Michaela considers the back story to proposals in Clause 1 of the Nationality and Borders Bill that seek to address these anomalies. George reports on a complicated case of a child not entitled to the citizenship of either of their lesbian parents nor of the country in which they were born.  And we’re joined by citizenship equality campaigner, Tabitha Sprague, who successfully fought for those born overseas to British citizens fathers to be entitled for British citizenship, to explain more about this struggle and her personal history that brought this about.   

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.  

In this episode we cover …  

1. The children of British parents denied the right to British nationality 

1. Gender discrimination  

1. Immigration Act 2014 and the Nationality and Borders Bill 

Quote  

My half sister was able to have citizenship through our dad because she was born in marriage. But I wasn’t. And I remember thinking why couldn’t I have citizenship because of the way I was born? 

 

—Tabitha Sprague 

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? 

Tabitha tweets about these issues @ukcitequality 

She also recommends the work of The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens 

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Did you know that British citizenship can be cancelled or removed? And that when the Nationality and Borders Bill passes into legislation the UK Home Secretary will be able to remove citizenship from individuals without giving them prior notice? Certain conditions may accompany this, but the government’s past record on citizenship deprivation shows that these powers have disproportionately by exercised against those from Britain’s racially and religiously minoritized communities.

In this episode we look in depth at how Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill sits in a longer history of citizenship deprivation . Over time, the UK government’s powers to strip people of their British citizenship have extended and expanded. The fallout from this has been uneven, impacting Britain’s racially minoritized communities disproportionately. Michaela introduces the case of Shamima Begum and explains the back story to Clause 9. George draws attention to the concerns raised about the extension of these powers. And we talk with Zainab Batul Naqvi, Senior Lecturer in Law at De Montfort University about how in recent years deprivation powers have been used disproportionately against Muslim citizens and how such discrimination echoes the tactics used by colonial administrators and governments.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

• Citizenship deprivation
• The case of Shamima Begum
• Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill

Quote

There's been a really big expansion of the powers that the government has to strip people have their citizenship …[It’s] something that's being weaponized by the government against certain communities, more than others … It's a really big fear for many people who are minoritized and marginalised in the UK, and it's mostly people of colour.

— Zainab Batul Naqvi

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Zainab tweets about these issues and more @zb_naqvi

Read her latest paper in Social and Legal Studies 

Head over to the Free Movement blog for Colin Yeo’s analysis of the increase in the use of deprivation powers

Over at The Conversation Devyani Prabhat explains Clause 9

Our recommended reading is Luke De Noronha’s Deporting Black Britons

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Should the ability to speak English be a precondition for access to rights and belonging in Britain today? What is really tested for in English-language testing for the purposes of migration and naturalisation? How is this connected to the global dominance of English as a ‘world language’? And what links this to the increasing hostility experienced by those speaking languages other than English in public space in Britain today? It might seem common sense that to live in a country you should be able to speak the language. But looking at the relatively short history of language testing into the UK’s citizenship testing regime reveals that not all is as it seems.

In this episode, we discuss how language testing was introduced into the naturalisation process alongside the Life in the UK test in 2002. What can the back story to its introduction tell us about Britishness and belonging? Presenter Michaela Benson outlines how the stage was set for English language ability to be part of the criteria for becoming British through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. We hear from George about his experiences of language testing for the purposes of coming to the UK for postgraduate study and heads back into the archives to uncover how these new provisions related to anti-terrorism legislation. And we’re joined by sociolinguistics scholar Kamran Khan to explore how testing potential citizens for linguistic proficiency emerged against the backdrop of domestic concerns about integration and community cohesion and the global rise of Islamophobia in the wake of 9/11, and what this meant for Britishness and belonging. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

• Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and 9/11
• Islamophobia and Britishness
• The relationship between language and nation-building

Quote

What that comes down to in the end is do you think language is a precondition for access to rights nd all those things that go with citizenship? And that comes with how you see the nation. Monolingualism and English is, is really tied up with the kind of idea of nation building.

• Kamran Khan

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Kamran tweets about his work (and other things) @securityling

His book Becoming a citizen explores many of the themes we address in the episode brought to life through the experiences of W, a Yemeni migrant in the UK, going through this process. But we also recommend his recent piece in Ethnicities that explores his ideas about the racial politics of language proficiency in the UK’s citizenship regime. 

And we are recommending Nisha Kapoor’s fantastic book Deport, Deprive Extradite.

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What do you know about the UK’s citizenship test? What do you think it tests for and how? What do you think it can tell us about the shape Britishness today?

In this episode, we look in-depth at the developing UK’s citizenship testing regime from its introduction in 2002 to its current form. Presenter Michaela Benson explores how in 2002 the then Labour Government introduced the Life in the UK test, language testing and compulsory citizenship ceremonies for those seeking to naturalise as British citizens. She highlights in particularly how these changes took place against the backdrop of 9/11, government policies on multiculturalism, integration and community cohesion. George Kalivis uncovers the story of the first person to take the citizenship test in Welsh. They are joined by Anne-Marie Fortier, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, who talks about how the citizenship test is best understood as part of an ongoing process through which people are moulded into desirable and deserving citizens. As she describes, this is a deeply unsettling process that reveals uncertainty lies at the heart of the process, revealing that citizenship may not be as secure as it is so often imagined.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

• The 2002 introduction of the UK’s citizenship testing regime
• What looking at the citizenship test can tell us about Britishness and belonging
• How the process of becoming a British citizen further consolidates the relationship between the English language and being British.

Quote

… citizenisation starts from the premise that migrants have a citizenship deficit, in the sense that they have to be made into citizens in order to be given then the formal status of citizenship through these different tests and other forms … in doing that it also uncitizenises them, it assumes that they are not citizens from another country, or it disregards the citizenship of another country but it also disregards the fact that these individuals might be active citizens informally, without the status; they might be active citizens, working in the country where they are residing, paying taxes in the country where they are residing, voting in the country where they are residing.

• Anne-Marie Fortier

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

You can find out more about Anne-Marie and her work here. She is occasionally on Twitter @AMFortierLancs.

We were discussing her book Uncertain Citizenship, published this year by Manchester University Press. If you are interested in her work on language and citizenship testing, we recommend her 2018 journal article On (not) speaking English: colonial legacies in language requirements for British citizenship.

Our recommended reading for this week is John Clarke, Kathleen Coll, Evelina Dagnino and Catherine Neveu’s Disputing Citizenship.

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How did changes in the UK's immigrations laws in the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for the Windrush deportation scandal? What can we learn about the racialised politics of belonging and migration in Britain today from looking at the historical transformation of immigration legislation?

In this episode, we look at how immigration controls were introduced in ways that explicitly restricted the movement to and settlement in the UK of Britain's racialised colonial citizens. Host Michaela Benson explains how changes in law which made some British citizens deportable from the UK and how these transformations in law were caught up in the transformation of Britain's colonies in nation-states, how the shifting relationships between Britain and its former colonies led to some people falling between the gaps as Britain tried to restrict the settlement of their own citizens. George Kalivis goes back into the archive to remind us of the history of deportation, highlighting how deportation was introduced through the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 to permit the deportation from the UK for those from Britain's colonies who were convicted of offences punishable with imprisonment. And they are joined by Elsa Oommen, independent scholar and visiting researcher at Goldsmiths and the University of Warwick, to discuss in more detail the historical back story to the Windrush Deportation Scandal; the legislative changes which mean that some colonial citizens living in the UK had their right to abode in the UK, their rights systematically eroded witout their knowledge; the litany of mistakes that led to the devastating and deadly effects for their lives and well-being in the context of the Hostile Environment; and what this can tell us about how questions of citizenship and migration are caught up in the contemporary politics of belonging in Britain.   

Access the full episode transcript

In this episode we cover …

• The historical back story to the Windrush Deportation Scandal
• The Commonwealth Immigration Acts of the 1960s and 1970s
• How Britain’s colonial citizens were made deportable and why this matters for making sense of the racialisation at the heart of questions of migration and belonging in Britain today

Quote

What has been quite stark to me is how the Government can go to extreme lengths in ensuring that some people are always made to belong and how some citizens, or some people could be citizens from the get-go, but could be made to feel like they are nothing and deportable; this what is the most striking revelation from my ongoing research, that there is really a continuum in which you can be a Commonwealth citizen but you can always be treated as a Commonwealth migrant.

— Elsa Oommen

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

To find out more about the Windrush Deportation Scandal, we recommend consulting Wendy Williams’ Windrush Lessons Learned Review.

You can find out more about Elsa and her research here. Her research funded by The Sociological Review with long-term Caribbean residents in the UK and the historical back story to the Hostile Environment is still in progress.

Her wider research focuses on youth mobility to the UK, a part of the immigration regime that has not received much notice. You can read her work about the experiences of youth mobility workers in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. We’d also like to recommend her recent piece for Discover Society, which considered the Youth Mobility Scheme as a route to settlement in the UK for young Hong Kongers leaving HK SAR in the wake of political oppression.

Our recommended reading of the week is Kathleen Paul’s 1997 book Whitewashing Britain, and in particular Chapter 5 Keeping Britain White.

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Recorded live at the virtual launch event hosted by the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities, Lancaster University, 21 October 2021, Talking about citizenship in ‘Global Britain’ brings together Chantelle Lewis (Surviving Society, University of Oxford); podcast host and producer Michaela Benson (Lancaster University) and podcast researcher George Kalivis (Goldsmiths) to talk about the conversations we need to be having about citizenship and how social science research can help to debunk taken-for-granted understandings of who is a citizen and who is a migrant. They explore why the back story to Britain’s contemporary citizenship-migration regime matters, how the past and present of British citizenship is caught up in global inequalities, and much more.

You can also watch the event on Youtube. 

About the contributors:

Michaela Benson is Professor in Public Sociology at Lancaster University, co-lead of the ESRC-funded project Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit, and host and producer of Who do we think we are? Tweets @michaelacbenson

Chantelle Lewis is Junior Research Fellow in Black British Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, co-host and founder of the anti-racist podcast Surviving Society, and Deputy Director of Leading Routes. Tweets @ChantelleJLewis

George Kalivis is a doctoral researcher in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, artist and architect.

Why do changes in Britain's immigration laws matter for making sense of citizenship today? What is the relationship of these changes to Britain's shift from empire to nation-state? In this episode, host Michaela Benson explains how decolonisation and the independence struggles of Britain's former colonies set the stage for citizenship to emerge in Britain. She explores the shift from subjecthood to citizenship and what this meant for people around the British Empire. Podcast researcher George Kalivis goes back into the archive to explore the introduction of the British Nationality Act 1948. They are joined by Devyani Prabhat, Professor of Law at the University of Bristol, to talk about what citizenship means in law; how the development of citizenship in Britain was a process of inclusion and exclusion managed through immigration and nationality legislation at their intersections; and how this understanding helps us to see the entrenched racism at the heart of nationality and immigration law today, including the British Nationality Act 1981.

Access the full episode transcript

In this episode we cover …

• The shifts in Britain's nationality legislation from the British Nationality Acts of 1948 and 1981
• How the development of British citizenship was caught up in Britain's decolonisation
• What immigration controls introduced in the 1960s and 1970s can tell us about the changing definition of what it meant to be British over time

Quote

Citizenship was not really defined in British Immigration and Nationality Laws for a very long time, in terms of the country.  So it wasn’t about the UK as such and the reason is very much historical, it’s based on the British empire and its relationship with colonies and former colonies and each stage of the Immigration and Nationality Laws we see certain elements being added in without actually describing who is a citizen or defining who is a citizen.

• Devyani Prabhat

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

You can find out more about Devyani's research on her University of Bristol Website (which includes links to many of her publications) and you can follow her on Twitter @ProfDPrabhat.

For the themes covered in this episode, we particular recommend her recent paper Unequal Citizenship and Subjecthood: A rose by any other name..? published in @NILegalQ, and her recent edited volume Citizenship in Times of Turmoil?

She has also written extensively about the people’s experiences of becoming British citizens in her book Britishness, belonging and citizenship and about several other timely issues relating to citizenship, including this piece about Shamima Begum: what the legal ruling about her return to the UK actually means:  for @ConversationUK and this for @freemovementlaw focused on Britain's unaccompanied migrant children.

For wider reading, this week's recommendation is Reiko Karatani's 2003 book 'Defining British Citizenship'.

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Did you know that the current definition of British citizenship is only 40 years old? Who do we think we are? starts its exploration of British citizenship by looking at the history of British citizenship, and how remembering that the question of who counts as British has changed alongside shifts in Britain’s position in the world might make us think again about these questions and their consequences in the present-day. In this episode, host Michaela Benson, a sociologist specialising in questions of citizenship and migration, draws on her family history to bring the story of British citizenship in the second half of the twentieth century to life and explores British subjecthood, a precursor to citizenship. Podcast researcher George Kalivis goes back into the archive to explore the 1961 Immigration Bill and the measures that this introduced. They are joined by guest, Gurminder Bhambra, Professor in Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, to talk about how recognising the back story to the development of British citizenship might change the ways that we think about migration, social justice and inequality in Britain today.

Access the episode transcript 

In this episode we cover …

• The short history of British citizenship as we know it
• The introduction of immigration controls for Citizens of the UK and Colonies
• Why history matters for making sense of the inequalities at the heart of Britain’s contemporary citizenship-migration regime

Quote

Citizenship is something that emerges in the mid to late 20th century as a category by way of which to stop people moving. We often think about this idea of passports as if that’s what enables us to move; actually, it was about stopping people moving.

— Gurminder Bhambra

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

You can find out more about Gurminder’s research on her website (which includes links to freely-accessible copies of many of her published works) and follow her on Twitter @GKBhambra

You can read Michaela’s full interview with Gurminder in The Sociological Review Magazine

Gurminder also mentioned Radhika Mongia’s 2018 book Indian Migration and Empire. To get a bit more of a flavour of the book and its contents, you can visit The Disorder of Things Blog, who have hosted a symposium on this work.

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To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Who do we think we are? is a podcast focussed on the conversations we need to be having about British citizenship today. It tells the story of how British citizenship developed and why this matters for questions of migration, citizenship and belonging in Britain today. The trailer identifies some of the issues covered in the series, from the removal of birthright citizenship through the British Nationality Act 1981 to how Britain was made as a white nation-state through immigration and nationality legislation. The episode features contributors to the series Gurminder Bhambra, Devyani Prabhat, Elsa Oommen, Imogen Tyler, John Vassiliou and host, Michaela Benson. 

Access the transcript