Migration Unboxed

Migration Mobilities Bristol

Conversations about migration are often inside the box: numbers, causes, effect on the economy, how to prevent it. This podcast unboxes migration. It opens up questions on movement and justice and disrupts conventional thinking to better understand how mobility, in all its forms, is a necessary part of all our lives.

Our approach is creative, making connections between different types of movement, going beyond the human and across time. It is also critical, challenging assumptions and prioritising justice, as well as conceptual and research driven (we are academics after all!). We call this ‘The Bristol Approach’ to migration and mobilities.

Join Bridget Anderson, Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB), to open the migration box with a diverse group of guests. In each episode we invite two experts from different corners of the world to bring us their ideas on movement. Expect lively conversation – and perhaps some arguments too! – about all things migration and mobilities.

Read more on our Migration Unboxed webpage.

Credits:

Presented by Bridget Anderson

Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol

Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @Melissafitzg

Music by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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How do people become 'migrants'?

How do people become 'migrants'?

In this episode we ask, how do people become migrantized, and what does this tell us about both migration and citizenship? Bridget invites guests Janine Dahinden and Manoj Dias-Abey to discuss these questions from their different disciplinary perspectives. As a social anthropologist and professor of transnational studies, Janine understands ‘migranticization’ as sets of performative practices that ascribe migratory status to certain people and bodies. Manoj, as a socio-legal scholar, considers how such processes shape the laws and regulations created by state institutions.In bringing together these different approaches our guests raise questions about how race, class and concepts of skill play into migrantization. They also ask whether the academic gaze should, in fact, focus more on 'demigrantizing' people by recognising how certain laws, such as those regulating labour migration, impact on citizens more widely.Bios:Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013).Janine Dahinden is Professor of Transnational Studies at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on (de)migranticization, mobility, transnationalisation and boundary making.Manoj Dias-Abey is Senior Lecturer in the University of Bristol Law School. His current research investigates how Britain thinks about and regulates labour migration, and how this has changed over time.Further links for the episode:Janine’s article on ‘Migranticization’.Manoj’s chapter on ‘The Aliens Order 1920, the “Work Permit” and the Making of the National Labour Market’ in the MMB edited volume Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race (available 17th February 2025).Credits: Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzgMusic by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com Follow us on:Bluesky - @mmbuob.bsky.socialLinkedIn – Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Instagram – mmbuobFacebook – Migration Mobilities Bristol Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

How do people become 'migrants'?

How do people become 'migrants'?

In this episode we ask, how do people become migrantized, and what does this tell us about both migration and citizenship? Bridget invites guests Janine Dahinden and Manoj Dias-Abey to discuss these questions from their different disciplinary perspectives. As a social anthropologist and professor of transnational studies, Janine understands ‘migranticization’ as sets of performative practices that ascribe migratory status to certain people and bodies. Manoj, as a socio-legal scholar, considers how such processes shape the laws and regulations created by state institutions.In bringing together these different approaches our guests raise questions about how race, class and concepts of skill play into migrantization. They also ask whether the academic gaze should, in fact, focus more on 'demigrantizing' people by recognising how certain laws, such as those regulating labour migration, impact on citizens more widely.Bios:Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013).Janine Dahinden is Professor of Transnational Studies at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on (de)migranticization, mobility, transnationalisation and boundary making.Manoj Dias-Abey is Senior Lecturer in the University of Bristol Law School. His current research investigates how Britain thinks about and regulates labour migration, and how this has changed over time.Further links for the episode:Janine’s article on ‘Migranticization’.Manoj’s chapter on ‘The Aliens Order 1920, the “Work Permit” and the Making of the National Labour Market’ in the MMB edited volume Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race (available 17th February 2025).Credits: Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzgMusic by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com Follow us on:Bluesky - @mmbuob.bsky.socialLinkedIn – Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Instagram – mmbuobFacebook – Migration Mobilities Bristol Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How does visuality help us understand movement?

How does visuality help us understand movement?

Images are crucial to how ideas and feelings about migrants circulate. In this episode, host Bridget Anderson invites her guests Victoria Hattam and Nariman Massoumi to explore how visual representation relates to the politics of migration. They discuss photographs, film scenes and everyday sights (and sounds!) that open up their thinking on movement and challenge the stereotypical images of migration in the media. Broadening our approach to visual representation can unsettle presumptions about who should and shouldn’t move.Bios:Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls.Victoria Hattam is Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research, New York. She works at the intersection of visual and material culture, global political economy, and bordering. Victoria was MMB’s Leverhulme Visiting Professor in 2023-24.Nariman Massoumi is Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Bristol and coordinator of the MMB research challenge Representation, Belonging, Futures. His latest film is ‘Pouring Water on Troubled Oil’ (2023).Further links for this episode:Blogs by Victoria and Nariman on Dover and Calais: Borderland Infrastructures.Blog on Victoria and Nariman’s workshop on visuality: Bordering Bristol: looking to see.Victoria’s Leverhulme lectures, and her image of the landing mat fence on the US-Mexico border: Leverhulme Visiting Professorship. Credits: Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzgMusic by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com Follow us:@mmbuob.bsky.socialLinkedInInstagramFacebook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What is 'migration' and why unbox it?

What is 'migration' and why unbox it?

Host Bridget Anderson asks guests Nandita Sharma and Tim Cole what they think of when they hear the word ‘migration’. Humans have always moved so when and why does moving become described as ‘migrating’? What might we miss if we just accept the term ‘migration’ without questioning it? In this lively conversation, taking us across different histories, landscapes, species and state systems, Bridget, Nandita and Tim take on the challenge of unboxing migration and show why this matters for making a more just world.Bios:Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013).Nandita Sharma is Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She is an activist scholar whose research is shaped by the social movements she is involved in. Nandita was a Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor with MMB in 2022.Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol. His research ranges across social, landscape and environmental histories with a focus on the Holocaust.Further links for this episode:Nandita Sharma’s book Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants (Duke University Press, 2020).MMB’s Race, Nation and Migration blog series.‘Invasive Others: Plants? People? Pathogens?’ – an interview with Miriam Ticktin on MMB Insights and Sounds.The (de)Bordering plot at the University of Bristol. Credits: Produced by Migration Mobilities BristolEdited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @MelissafitzgMusic by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com Follow us on:@mmbuob.bsky.socialLinkedInInstagramFacebook Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.