Join us for the discussion of three great work in progress by our PGR student members :) - No need to register, just show up.
Title: Listening Across Borders: Methodological Reflections on Researching Access to Legal Aid with Undocumented Migrants in the UK
Author: Seyi Ugochukwu
Abstract: This work-in-progress presentation reflects on the methodological journey of a doctoral project that examines access to legal aid for undocumented migrants in the UK through a postcolonial lens. Building on earlier theoretical work, it considers how postcolonial critique informs not only the subject of study but also the very practice of
research. Adopting a qualitative and interpretive design, the study combines semi-structured interviews with documentary analysis. Reflexively, it recognises ethnographic engagement in migrant community spaces as a critical site of inquiry, probing what it means to conduct research with people living in states of legal and social invisibility,
where questions of ethics, power, and representation are ever-present. Central to the discussion is the concept of method as care; an approach grounded in practices of deep listening, reciprocity, and sustained reflexivity that challenges extractive traditions in migration scholarship. By framing fieldwork as a moral and political encounter, the presentation explores how researchers might attend to undocumented lives without reproducing the systemic exclusions they seek to
critique. Ultimately, it argues for a postcolonial methodology as both an analytical stance and an ethical commitment: one that reimagines knowledge production itself as a potential site of justice.
Bio: Seyi is a doctoral researcher in law at the University of Sussex, examining access to legal aid for undocumented migrants in the UK through a postcolonial and socio-legal perspective. Her research investigates how colonial legacies continue to structure legal exclusion, administrative decision-making and the production of migrant illegality. She draws on critical legal theory, historical analysis and documentary methods to explore how legal aid operates as a boundary-making practice that shapes the conditions of migrant recognition and belonging. Her research is supported through her affiliation with the Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Sussex Centre for Human Rights Research and the Centre for Rights, Reparations and Anti-Colonial Justice. She continues to present her work at research events within these networks and contributes to interdisciplinary discussions on borders, belonging and access to justice. Her broader academic
interests include migrant agency, everyday legality and postcolonial approaches to law.
Title: “Its healing as much as it is hurting”: Understanding Racial Capitalism within care Work
Author: Ella RR Monkcom
Abstract: Like many other countries, Adult Social Care (ASC) provision in England is dependent on a predominantly female workforce, with men making up 22% of workers in 2025. In addition, the sector is heavily reliant on migrant workers, with 29% of workers in England being born outside the UK. Notably, these demographic factors are interrelated, as a recent increase in the proportion of male care workers has been directly linked to an expansion in overseas recruitment, particularly from countries outside the EU. Given this background, my PhD examines the experiences of men working in the ASC sector, including those who were born in the UK and those who have migrated here. Currently in my final year of study, I have conducted semi-structured and life history interviews with ~30 British, Romanian, Polish, Zimbabwean, South African and Nigerian male care workers and am presently drafting the empirical chapters of my thesis. In this workshop I focus on presenting my findings and theoretical framework from my first empirical chapter (chapter 5 overall). In this chapter I explore what the interviews indicate about the nature of work in ASC today, with a particular focus on the concept of racial capitalism. More specifically, I put my findings into dialogue with three texts: Premilla Nadasen’s ‘Care: The Highest Stage of Capitalism’ (2023), Gargi Bhattacharyya’s ‘Rethinking Racial Capitalism’ (2018) and Nancy Fraser’s ‘Cannibal Capitalism’ (2023), and elaborate on the complex relationship between exploitation and transformation in contemporary care work.
Bio:
Ella completed her BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences and MPhil in Health, Medicine and Society at the University of Cambridge before moving to Sheffield in 2020. After working in the care sector and in education and local authority roles, Ella undertook an MA in Social Research Methods at the University of Sheffield. In October 2023, she began her doctoral project examining the experiences of men working in the adult social care sector in England. This work explores the ways that migration and racialisation interact with men’s experiences of masculinity and care within care work.
Title: Finding belonging in a cultural grey-zone: North Korean escapees’ experiences of interculturality in South Korea
Author: Catrin Snaith
Abstract:Nationalised understandings of culture have often struggled to adequately explain the lives of people whose cultural experiences transcend conventional national boundaries. One such group are the 34,000 North Korean escapees living in South Korea, who must navigate a cultural grey-zone: a society that is closely related to the one they left behind, but one with its own distinct and unfamiliar cultural characteristics. Deeply rooted ethnocentric South Korean narratives and superficial conceptions of culture have meant that escapees have largely been absent in academic & everyday discussions of interculturality. This research uses thematic analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with resettled escapees between the ages of 25-40, and ethnographic participant observation at community events, to explore their experiences of interculturality in South Korean society. This project aims to challenge existing racialised public narratives which present escapees as unvalued citizens, inherently lacking globalised skills. It also explores their feelings of similarity and difference to the South Korean majority, in addition to how they go about creating belonging and community in the face of ongoing adversity and social stigma.
Bio:
Catrin holds a BA in Korean Studies with Japanese, and a MA in Intercultural Communication, where she won the Postgraduate Dissertation Award, in addition to the Trados Excellence in Translation Award. In 2020, she graduated from the Hanyang University Language Institute, obtaining the top level of the Korean Language and Culture Program. As part of her PhD, she combines her two fields in an interdisciplinary project which explores North Korean escapees’ experiences of intercultural communication, focusing on phenomena such as intercultural competence, acculturation and (inter)cultural identity. She has also worked as a research intern for Citizen's Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR), and for a North Korean escapee resettlement charity, both based in South Korea. Her research is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council through the White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities (WRoCAH).
