Webinar link: https://cigionline-org.zoom.us/j/86991705414?pwd=FVOaX3jFAJvngSe27nVcZ8PFgNrmGa.1
The movement of people in small boats across the English Channel to claim asylum has created a policy and media spectacle in the UK. This paper examines the bordering infrastructure along the Northern French Coast and in the UK which have shaped these criminalised journeys. It does so by focussing on the political economy of bordering and the wider global and social interests that shape the border-security economy. Whilst it is fairly well established that coercive policing, surveillance, and the fortification of ports such as Calais, have directed people towards maritime routes in the Channel, what is less developed is an understanding of whose interests are served by these strategies. Drawing on conceptualisations of racial capitalism, this paper thus asks: in whose material and symbolic interests do borders such as this work?
About the Speaker
Dr Lucy Mayblin is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on asylum, human rights, policy-making, and the legacies of colonialism. She is author of three books: Asylum After Empire (2017), Impoverishment and Asylum (2019), Migration Studies and Colonialism (with Joe Turner, 2021), and co-edited the collection Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (2022) and the Sage Handbook of Global Sociology (2023). She was awarded the UK Philip Leverhulme Prize 2020 for her research achievements in the area of asylum and migration, and is currently working on an ESRC funded project on UK government response to small boats Channel crossings with Arshad Isakjee, Thom Davies, Joe Turner and Tesfalem Yemane.
