Dr Lucy Mayblin (she/her)
PhD
Department of Sociological Studies
Senior Lecturer in Sociology
Co-Director Migration Research Group
+44 114 222 6445
Full contact details
Department of Sociological Studies
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Lucy Mayblin is a political sociologist whose research focuses on borders, human rights, policy-making, and the legacies of colonialism. She is particularly interested in how policymakers imagine the world, and how this leads to particular kinds of bordering projects being taken, often with significant social justice implications. A central theme in her work has been how the legacies of 500 years of European colonialism continue to shape the contemporary moment, particularly in Britain. She is the author of three books: Asylum After Empire: Postcolonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2017) which won the British Sociological Association’s Philip Abrams Memorial Prize in 2018, Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence ( Routledge, 2019), and Migration Studies and Colonialism (with Joe Turner, Polity, 2020). She has also co-edited two books: Postcoloniality and Forced Migration (Bristol University Press, 2022) and the SAGE Handbook of Global Sociology (Sage, 2024).
In 2020 she won a Philip Leverhulme Prize for Sociology. She is currently working with colleagues on British government responses to small boat Channel crossings, and on methods for postcolonial historical sociology.
Lucy is Associate Editor for the Global Social Challenges Journal, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She was previously an editor of the Global Social Theory website and an advisory board member, editor and contributor to the Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.
- 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
- Eco-coloniality and the violent environmentalism of the UK–France border. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 42(5-6), 776-802. View this article in WRRO
- Small boats, big contracts: extracting value from the UK's post‐Brexit asylum ‘crisis’. The Political Quarterly, 95(2), 253-262. View this article in WRRO
- ‘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.
- 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.
- Asylum, Welfare and Colonialism in Europe: Who Belongs, and Who Deserves?. Social Sciences, 13(11), 620-620.
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
- Unsettled: Refugee camps and the making of multicultural Britain by Jordana Bailkin (review). Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 22(1). View this article in WRRO
- 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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Co-Director, Migration Research Group (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/migration-research-group)
Lucy is interested in supervising PhD projects on: - The politics of asylum, borders and bordering - Histories of colonialism and contemporary post and neo-colonial dynamics as they relate to borders and migration - Human and refugee rights
- Grants
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2023-25 White Rose Network, The UK-Rwanda partnership as the ‘end of asylum’: Externalising borders, offshoring and resistance (Co-I), £13,0002022-25 ESRC Project Grant, Channel Crossings: Irregular migration, policies and politics in the English Channel (Co-I) £585,000 (ES/W006170/1)
2022-26 Sheffield Doctoral Training Centre on New Horizons in Borders and Bordering -6 PhD scholarships- (Co-I and Deputy Director) £350,000
2021-24 Philip Leverhulme Prize, Sociology and Social Policy (PI) £100,000
2017 ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, Civil Society filling the Gaps: Supporting Asylum Seekers at the Local Level (PI) £10,340 (ES/M500434/1)
2015-19 ESRC Future Research Leaders project grant, Asylum, Welfare and Work in the Age of Austerity (PI) £240,000 (ES/L011468/1)
- Teaching interests
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Lucy currently teaches Current Sociology, a whole year core module on the MA Sociology, and Contemporary Challenges: Refugees and Asylum, also at the MA level. As part of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Borders and Bordering she co-ordinates various activities for PGRs including a reading group, a masterclass series, and a PGR seminar series.
- Teaching activities
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- MA Sociology: Programme Leader
- MA Sociology: Current Sociology
- MA Sociology: Contemporary Challenges: Refugees and Asylum
- Partnerships, Engagement and Impact
Across Lucy's work she is committed to partnership and collaboration with groups outside of the university. This includes campaigning groups, and NGOs (from local to international) and has involved running workshops, consultancy, and research partnerships. Collaborations have occurred through formal research projects, but more importantly the Migration Research Group is committed to creating spaces for conversations within the university where community learning and thinking between and across the university/non-university divide can take place. Alongside her academic work, Lucy is also a trustee for the Sheffield based charity ASSIST.