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This book examines the factors affecting the health and wellbeing of young people as they transition to adulthood under the shadow of migration control. Drawing on unique longitudinal data, the book illuminates how they conceptualize wellbeing for themselves and others in contexts of prolonged and politically induced uncertainty. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the experiences of over one hundred unaccompanied young migrants, primarily from Afghanistan, Albania, and Eritrea. It shows the lengths these young people will go to in pursuit of safety, security, and the futures they aspire to. Interdisciplinary in nature, the book champions a new political economy analysis of wellbeing in the context of migration and demonstrates the urgent need for policy reform.

Assessing migration in the context of climate change, this book draws on empirical research to offer a unique analysis of policy-making in the field. This detailed account is a vital step in understanding the links between global discourses on human mobilities, climate change and specific policy responses. The idea that people are being forced to move because of climate change, and that in the future even more people will be forced to do so, has captured imaginations globally. The majority of these representations of lives touched by climate change are expressions of outrage that the actions of a few will affect the lives of so many, that climate change will have consequences so grave that people will be forced to leave their homes. The aim of this book is to examine the distinct policy debate surrounding the climate change and human mobility nexus, in particular the construction of these two related concepts as a distinct phenomenon that requires policy responses.

This book is concerned with the effects of European migration policy on migrants in the Global South. In particular, it uncovers how border enforcement policies and the crackdown on irregular migration affect the life of migrants in so called ‘transit’ countries outside the European Union. The material for this study is based on ethnographic research in Morocco with migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. The book is mainly concerned with the human and social effects of immobility during the migratory journey. It describes how migration policies in and outside Morocco contribute to a situation where migrants get stuck in Morocco for years, and in the process become increasingly marginalized from participation in society. These prolonged periods of forced immobility negatively affect migrants’ life course, as well as their relation to the present, past and future. This alters their feelings of identity, their social relations to friends and relatives, and their aspirations for the future. The immense human suffering this situation implies has a tendency to further reinforce their wish to leave the country, rather than encouraging them to abandon their migratory projects. The book links these empirical insights on immobility to social theories of time. It argues that the fragmentation of migration processes and immobilization of migrants has an impact on migrants’ view of their own lives as ‘out of sync’ with modernity. Thinking about migration and immobility in relation to time offers a different perspective on migration processes which have until now mostly been theorized through reference to concepts of space.

Questions of migration and citizenship are at the heart of global political debate with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump having ripple effects around the world. Providing new insights into the politics of migration and citizenship in the United Kingdom and the United States, this book challenges the increasingly prevalent view of migration and migrants as threats and of formal citizenship as a necessary marker of belonging. Instead the book offers an analysis of migration and citizenship in practice, as a counterpoint to simplistic discourses. It uses cutting-edge academic work on migration and citizenship to address three themes central to current debates: borders and walls, mobility and travel, and belonging. Through this analysis, a clearer picture of the roots of these politics emerges as well as of the consequences for mobility, political participation and belonging in the 21st century.

The definition of data in qualitative research is expanding. This book highlights the value of embodiment as a qualitative research tool and outlines what it means to do embodied research at various points of the research process. It shows how using this non-invasive approach with vulnerable research participants such as migrant, refugee, and asylum-seeking women can help service users or research participants to be involved in the co-production of services and in participatory research. Drawing on both feminist and post-colonial theory, the author uses her own research with migrant women in London, focusing specifically on collage making and digital storytelling, whilst also considering other potential tools for practicing embodied research such as yoga, personal diaries, dance, and mindfulness. Situating the concept of ‘embodiment’ on the map of research methodologies, the book combines theoretical groundwork with actual examples of application to think pragmatically about intersectionality through embodiment.

Whether addressing questions of loss, (be)longing, fears of an immigration ‘invasion’ or perceived injustices in immigration policies, immigration debates are infused with strong emotions. Emotion is often presented as a factor that complicates and hinders rational discussion. This book explores how emotion is, in fact, central to understanding how and why we have the immigration policies we do, and what kinds of policies may be beneficial for various groups of people in society. The author looks beyond the ‘negative’ emotions of fear and hostility to examine the politics of compassion and empathy. Using case studies from Australia, Europe and the United States, the book offers a new and original analysis of immigration policy and immigration debates.

This book examines the activities of UK and international elites through the lens of state crime and social policy. Initially it defines the ideal state as a single, functioning whole that ensures uniformity in the name of legitimacy yet the book poignantly outlines the dangers associated with the maintenance of legitimacy and state power. Anti-democratic measures such as the invasions of other nation states, the idea that the media, powerful corporations and individuals can both reinforce and influence the state along with the problems of over-zealous policing of a state’s own populace are also covered. Overall, the book promotes a better understanding of the complex interplay between politics, the media, business and criminal enterprise and, as a consequence, provides a comprehensive discussion of state immorality and deviance generally and state crime in particular.

This book explores methodological issues relating to the involvement of refugees in both service evaluation and development and research more generally. It builds on a two-year seminar series funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and attended by members of a range of statutory and voluntary organisations, as well as academics and refugees themselves. The participants jointly drew up a set of good-practice guidelines that are re-produced in the book. Key features include a focus on the methodology for active involvement of refugees, a discussion of barriers to involvement, suggestions for overcoming barriers, analysis of existing practices and ideas for change, and a discussion of the implications for policy, research, and practice.

This book establishes asylum seekers as a socially excluded group, investigating the policy of dispersing asylum seekers across the UK and providing an overview of historic and contemporary dispersal systems. It is the first book to seek to understand how asylum seekers experience the dispersal system and the impact this has on their lives. The author argues that deterrent asylum policies increase the sense of liminality experienced by individuals, challenges assumptions that asylum seekers should be socially excluded until receipt of refugee status, and illustrates how they create their own sense of ‘belonging’ in the absence of official recognition.