69´«Ã½

The ESRC funds a select number of large centres across the United Kingdom and 69´«Ã½ is a founding collaborator in WISERD, a designated national research centre, home to interdisciplinary research in the social sciences. As part of the second of the latest major ESRC investment in WISERD, 69´«Ã½ colleagues in the School of History, Philosophy and Social Sciences (Mann, Loftus, Feilzer, and Davis) will conduct research on the highly topical theme of Border, Boundaries and Migrations. Researchers will undertake comparative case studies and placed based ethnographies to examine factors shaping civil society engagement with migration and forms of bordering and explore how social boundary activation mechanisms are articulated by civil society groups. The research will involve a series of comparative international case studies, undertaken in two stages and adopting a plural causation approach to investigate different types of ‘border moments’. Stage 1 will conduct broad comparative analyses of data from countries in northern, southern, eastern and western Europe drawing on secondary sources, policy documents, web-based analysis, media analysis and interviews with key actors. Stage 2 will involve ethnographic fieldwork, observations and interviewing with state-civil society border workers in a purposive sample of 4 case study areas identified from stage 1. Examples of potential areas of focus include the sea and air border between UK and Ireland, the Swedish refugee crisis, the Identitarian Movement in Italy, NGO and state relations in Greece, child migrants in France, and detention of asylum seekers in Hungary. Contribution to social science impact: by working closely with international civil society organisations and NGOs, including the International Red Cross; International Organisation for Migration (IOM); Migrants at Sea Org; United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), we will be able to contribute important insights into the impacts of wider border policies in particular contexts and sites on their work.