Masterclass from the Centre for Doctoral Training in New Horizons in Borders and Bordering, University of Sheffield

14.00-16.00 October 16th 2023

Led by: Dr. Laura Cleton – Postdoctoral researcher at UNU-MERIT & Maastricht University, incoming postdoctoral researcher (1 November 2023) at Erasmus University Rotterdam (NL)

This masterclass centers on the tensions and difficulties researchers might encounter when “studying up” (Nader 1972), in particular in state bureaucracies. More specifically, it discusses the politics of acquiring access to sites including government bureaucracies, police force, detention personnel and the offices of policy makers, who are involved in the control and management of mobile populations. While getting access to fieldwork sites and research participants is a long-discussed topic in social sciences generally and in anthropology specifically, most of this work focuses on moments when access is not being granted and strategies to overcome this. Researchers of migration control specifically describe how hostility and the opacity within migration control regimes lead to difficulties for conducting academic research. In this masterclass, I will instead reflect on two successful access negotiations with the Dutch deportation apparatus and question what such success can tell us about the workings of repressive migration control bureaucracies, and what consequences entering into a relationship with government actors can have for academic knowledge production. I argue that granting access as such serves an important function for the deportation apparatus, as it helps to legitimize state power and uphold their moral authority. By selectively facilitating access and enabling scrutiny by researchers, journalists and the wider public, I argue that the deportation apparatus strategically performs transparency and ‘voluntary accountability’. The seminar reflects on the implications of research being appropriated for the purpose of such legitimation work and touches upon the differentiated expectations, tensions and ethical questions that ethnographically studying securitized spaces of everyday migration control can bring about.

Dr. Laura Cleton is a postdoctoral research fellow at United Nations University-MERIT & Maastricht University and incoming postdoctoral researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her work centres on deportation regimes in Europe, working on “assisted voluntary return” programs (with Reinhard Schweitzer and Sébastien Chauvin), the role of (international) bureaucrats in effectuating deportation, and feminist approaches to migration governance (with Saskia Bonjour and Petra Meier). She acts as Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Her research interests include migration governance in Europe, (international) street-level bureaucracies, AVR and deportation, feminist approaches to forced migration and family migration. Her dissertation was recently co-awarded with the American Political Science Association Migration & Citizenship section Best Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in migration & citizenship studies defended in 2022.