Dr Lucy Mayblin
PhD
Department of Sociological Studies
Senior Lecturer in Sociology
(She/her)
+44 114 222 6445
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Dr. Lucy Mayblin is a Political Sociologist whose research focuses on asylum, human rights, policy-making, and the legacies of colonialism. She is the author of Asylum After Empire: Postcolonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking (2017) which won the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2018, Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence (2019), and Migration Studies and Colonialism (with Joe Turner, 2020).
Her work has also been published in a wide range of journals including Sociology, Migration Studies, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Economy and Society, and Citizenship Studies. In 2017 Lucy’s article with Aneta Piekut and Gill Valentine ‘”Other” Posts from “Other” Places: Poland Through a Postcolonial Lens?’ won the SAGE Prize for Innovation and Excellence in the Journal Sociology; and in 2020 she was the recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize in recognition of the “significant international impact” of her research and her “exceptionally promising future trajectory”.
Lucy currently leads the MA Sociology programme and teaches the postgraduate level modules ‘Current Sociology’ and ‘Contemporary Challenges: Refugees and Asylum’. She is the director Postgraduate Taught Admissions within the Department of Sociological Studies and sits on the Equality and Diversity Committee.
She is on the advisory board of the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.
- Research interests
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Lucy’s research centres on the politics of asylum, particularly in Britain. This has included explorations of the connections between Britain’s colonial past and asylum policy today, most notably in ‘Asylum After Empire: Postcolonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking’ (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017).
From 2015 to 2019, Lucy led a project funded through an Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Future Research Leaders scheme which investigated the politics of asylum, welfare and work in Britain. The project explored how policy is made in relation to asylum seekers’ access to welfare and work, the implications of restricting asylum seeker’s economic rights (keeping them in poverty) for the third sector, and then the impact upon asylum seekers in their everyday lives. This resulted in a range of publications, including the monograph Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence. This project was also awarded an additional £10,000 of funding through the ESRC’s Impact Acceleration scheme for work with third sector organisations on the issue of the third sector’s sole in asylum support.
Lucy is currently working with Thom Davies (Nottingham), Arshad Isakjee (Liverpool) and Joe Turner (York) on a collaborative programme of research and writing, which seeks to situate irregular Channel crossings and policy responses to them within the context of international economic, political and historical logics and confluences, particularly of racial capitalism and postcolonial bordering. She is also working on a SAGE Handbook on Global Social Theory with Gurminder K Bhambra, Kathryn Median and Mara Viveros Vigolla, and a co-edited collection for Bristol University Press on Postcolonial Perspectives to Forced Migration (with Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, Sharla Fett, Nina Sahraoui and Eva Magdalena Stambøl).
In 2020 Lucy won on of the Philip Leverhulme Prizes for Sociology and from September 2021 will be working on an archival project on the 1967 Protocol on the Status of Refugees, and a contemporary exploration of the international spread of ‘crimes of solidarity’ (where citizens are punished for helping irregular migrants).
Lucy has worked with, and presented to, a range of organisations in her research including the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, the British Refugee Council, Refugee Action, The Red Cross, ASSIST (Sheffield), Asylum Welcome (Oxford), and City of Sanctuary.
- Publications
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Books
- The Sage Handbook of Global Sociology. Sage Publications Limited.
- Postcoloniality and Forced Migration Mobility, Control, Agency. Policy Press.
- Migration Studies and Colonialism. John Wiley & Sons.
- Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence. Abingdon: Routledge.
- Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking. London: Rowman and Littlefield.
Journal articles
- Small Boats, Big Contracts: Extracting Value from the
UK 's Post‐Brexit Asylum ‘Crisis’. The Political Quarterly, 95(2), 253-262.
- ‘Bringing order to the border’: liberal and illiberal fantasies of border control in the English channel. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. View this article in WRRO
- The neglected colonial legacy of the 1951 refugee convention. International Migration, 59(4), 265-267.
- Channel crossings: offshoring asylum and the afterlife of empire in the Dover Strait. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44(13), 2307-2327.
- The Death of Asylum and the Search for Alternatives.
- Unsettled: Refugee camps and the making of multicultural Britain by Jordana Bailkin. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 22(1).
- Necropolitics and the Slow Violence of the Everyday: Asylum Seeker Welfare in the Postcolonial Present. Sociology, 54(1), 107-123. View this article in WRRO
- Global Social Theory : building resources. Area, 51(4), 816-819.
- Imagining asylum, governing asylum seekers : complexity reduction and policy making in the UK home office. Migration Studies, 7(1), 1-20. View this article in WRRO
- Asylum and refugee support in the UK: civil society filling the gaps?. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(3), 375-394.
- Unfree labour in immigration detention: exploitation and coercion of a captive immigrant workforce. Economy and Society, 47(2), 191-213.
- ‘They kick you because they are not able to kick the ball’: normative conceptions of sex difference and the politics of exclusion in mixed-sex football, 222-238.
- Complexity reduction and policy consensus: Asylum seekers, the right to work, and the ‘pull factor’ thesis in the UK context. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 18(4), 812-828. View this article in WRRO
- Migration and diversity in a post-socialist context: Creating integrative encounters in Poland. Environment and Planning A, 48(5), 960-978. View this article in WRRO
- Troubling the exclusive privileges of citizenship: mobile solidarities, asylum seekers, and the right to work. CITIZENSHIP STUDIES, 20(2), 192-207. View this article in WRRO
- ‘Other’ Posts in ‘Other’ Places: Poland through a Postcolonial Lens?. Sociology, 50(1), 60-76. View this article in WRRO
- In the contact zone: engineering meaningful encounters across difference through an interfaith project. The Geographical Journal, 182(2), 213-222.
- ‘Big Brother welcomes you’: exploring innovative methods for research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. Qualitative Research, 15(5), 583-599. View this article in WRRO
- Experimenting with spaces of encounter: Creative interventions to develop meaningful contact. Geoforum, 63, 67-80. View this article in WRRO
- Colonialism, Decolonisation, and the Right to be Human: Britain and the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees. Journal of Historical Sociology. View this article in WRRO
- 21 años de Gender, Place and Culture: Modos de ver: El sexismo y el prejuicio olvidado. Gender, Place and Culture, 21(4), 401-414. View this article in WRRO
- Asylum, welfare and work: Reflections on research in asylum and refugee studies. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 34(5), 375-391.
- Never look back: Political thought and the abolition of slavery. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26(1), 93-110.
- International Relations and non-western thought: imperialism, colonialism and investigations of global modernity. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 87(5), 1227-1228.
- What is geography's contribution to making citizens?. Geography, 93(1), 34-39.
- Made in...? Appreciating the everyday geographies of connected lives. Teaching Geography, 32(2), 80-83.
- Eco-coloniality and the violent environmentalism of the UK–France border. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.
Chapters
- Of the Mobile and the Immobilized: COVID-19 and the Uneven Geographies of Disease Transmission, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 109-124). Bristol University Press
- Introduction, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 1-27). Bristol University Press
- Conclusion: Postcoloniality and Forced Migration, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 223-236). Bristol University Press
- Of the Mobile and the Immobilized: COVID-19 and the Uneven Geographies of Disease Transmission, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 109-124). Policy Press
- Conclusion: Postcoloniality and Forced Migration, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 223-236). Bristol University Press
- Of the Mobile and the Immobilized: COVID-19 and the Uneven Geographies of Disease Transmission, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 109-124). Bristol University Press
- Introduction, Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (pp. 1-27). Bristol University Press
- Part 2: commentary, Regulating Refugee Protection Through Social Welfare (pp. 93-103).
- Postcolonial perspectives on migration governance, Handbook on the Governance and Politics of Migration (pp. 25-35).
- Impoverishment and Asylum Social Policy as Slow Violence Introduction, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 1-+).
- Impoverishment and asylum Conclusion, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 131-141).
- Slow violence Everyday life on asylum support, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 96-130).
- Producing slow violence Imagining asylum as economic migration, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 46-73).
- Ameliorating slow violence Civil society as gap filler, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 74-95).
- Historicising and theorising impoverishment and asylum, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 29-45).
- Economic rights and seeking asylum, IMPOVERISHMENT AND ASYLUM: SOCIAL POLICY AS SLOW VIOLENCE (pp. 12-28).
- Postcolonial Theory In Outhwaite W & Turner S (Ed.), The SAGE Handbook of Political Sociology: Two Volume Set (pp. 157-170). SAGE Publications Ltd
- Is there a black and minority ethnic third sector in the UK?, Community groups in context: Local activities and actions (pp. 172-191).
- Is there a black and minority ethnic third sector in the UK? (pp. 177-198). Bristol University Press
- Is there a black and minority ethnic third sector in the UK?, Community Groups in Context (pp. 177-198). Policy Press
- Is there a black and minority ethnic third sector in the UK?, Community Groups in Context (pp. 177-198). Policy Press
- CREATING MEANINGFUL CONTACT: BOUNDARIES AND BRIDGES IN THE INTERCULTURAL CITY, The Intercultural City: Migration, Minorities and the Management of Diversity (pp. 153-162).
Book reviews
- Freedom time: negritude, decolonization, and the future of the world. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(3), 524-526.
- Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On liberal governances of mobility by Hagar Kotef. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 17(3).
- Book Review: Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Manuela Boatca and Sérgio Costa (eds) Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches. Sociology, 46(4), 772-773.
- Book Review: Citizenship and Immigration. The Sociological Review, 59(1), 183-185.
- The Idea of Human Rights. POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, 8(3), 376-376.
- Book Reviews. Critical Policy Studies, 3(1), 141-148.
- Gender, Conflict and Migration. Edited by Navnita Chadha Behera.. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(1), 138-140.
- The Sage Handbook of Global Sociology. Sage Publications Limited.
- Research group
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Lucy welcomes PhD applications from students interested in asylum and refugee policy, colonialism and human rights.
Current Research Students:
- Zihuan Zhang, Theorising racism in China
- Dua’a Almegbil, Social Determinants of Oral Health in the Zataari Refugee Camp
- Khulud Sahhari, The UK Public Libraries' Strategies of Serving A Multicultural Society: The Arab Community as a Case Study
- Edanur Yazici, Civil Society Responses to Asylum Seeker Support in the UK
- Grants
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Philip Leverhulme Prize
- Duration: 2021-2024
- Awarding Body: The Leverhulme Trust
- Amount: £100,000
Asylum, Welfare and Work in the Age of Austerity (PI)
- Duration: 2015-2018
- Awarding Body: ESRC
- Amount: £240,000
Civil Society filling the Gaps: Supporting Asylum Seekers at the Local Level (PI)
- Duration: 2017
- Awarding Body: ESRC Impact Acceleration Account
- Amount: £10,340
- Teaching activities
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- MA Sociology: Programme Leader
- MA Sociology: Current Sociology
- MA Sociology: Contemporary Challenges: Refugees and Asylum