MRG Conference ‘Crises and Hope: Understanding the processes, relations and inequalities within migration’
The conference funded by the British Sociological Association (BSA) and hosted by the Migration Research Group (MRG) took place on 19th June 2023 at the University of Sheffield.
The conference was organised by a small team of PGRs: Lucy Potter, Beth Porter, Siyi Wang, Yingzi Shen and Yadi Zhang.
Presenters came from universities all over the UK including London Universities, Keele, Bristol, Bangor, Leeds, Sheffield, Southampton, Oxford, Warwick, Aberdeen, Durham, Edge Hill, York, Huddersfield, Newcastle and more!
The panels of the conference covered a wide range of topics within migration research consisting of challenges and resistance in migration spaces, the everyday, legal and policy processes of migration, identities and belonging, health and inequalities and bordering.
Some panels were captured by a visual scribe, artistically portraying speakers research:
We also heard from our keynote speaker, Dr Amanda Spalding, who presented on some of the implications on recent UK immigration law. Amanda shared why changes in this area have been seen as a process of criminalisation which conceptualises immigration law in an unhelpful way. The impact on migrants in the UK was also discussed, how the effects of the ‘hostile environment’ has created and exacerbated inequities enshrined in law.
This talk was timely as at this very moment the UK government is trying to push through the Illegal Migration Bill in response to the ‘small boat crisis’. This conference situated the language of crises, not on people who cross borders, but on the creation of a legal system which embeds the notion of ‘immigration exceptionalism’.
We’d like to thank all the organisers of the conference, the co-directors of the MRG Lucy Mayblin and Aneta Piekut, presenters, speakers and attendees. We’d also like to thank all the chairs who spent time giving presenters feedback on their presentations: Majella Kilkey, Patricia Nabuco Martuscelli, Lucy Mayblin, Tanya Aberman and Aneta Piekut.
* Liam Callebout is an illustrator whose speciality lies in ideation, stories and bright bold designs. Liam works as a visual scriber for universities in his specialities of storytelling and digital painting.
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