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Migration Unboxed

Migration Unboxed

Written by: Migration Mobilities Bristol
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About this listen

Conversations about migration are often inside the box: numbers, causes, effect on the economy, how to prevent it. This podcast unboxes migration. It opens up questions on movement and justice and disrupts conventional thinking to better understand how mobility, in all its forms, is a necessary part of all our lives.


Our approach is creative, making connections between different types of movement, going beyond the human and across time. It is also critical, challenging assumptions and prioritising justice, as well as conceptual and research driven (we are academics after all!). We call this ‘The Bristol Approach’ to migration and mobilities.



Join Bridget Anderson, Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB), to open the migration box with a diverse group of guests. In each episode we invite two experts from different corners of the world to bring us their ideas on movement. Expect lively conversation – and perhaps some arguments too! – about all things migration and mobilities.



Read more on our Migration Unboxed webpage.



Credits:

Presented by Bridget Anderson

Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol

Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @Melissafitzg

Music by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com



Follow us on:

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Migration Mobilities Bristol Political Science Politics & Government Science Social Sciences World
Episodes
  • Rethinking migration: the 'Bristol Approach'

    Rethinking migration: the 'Bristol Approach'
    Jun 16 2025

    In this bonus episode of 'Migration Unboxed' our host Bridget Anderson talks to four of the authors from her new edited volume Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race (Bristol University Press, 2025). The book takes a radically interdisciplinary approach to migration and makes connections with other academic, policy and activist fields. It situates what is conventionally understood as ‘migration’ within the broader field of mobilities – including of goods, animals, policies and ideas as well as people. Like this podcast, then, Rethinking Migration follows the Bristol Approach in taking thinking on migration outside the box.


    The four authors in this episode come from diverse disciplines - history, music, criminology and history of art. Their conversation shows how working closely together on the volume enabled them think in new ways about their subject, whether migrants and borders in Medieval England, how music crosses borders and the Ukraine war, the movement of earth in pre-modern Europe, or the construction of illegality and borders in speeches of the UK political elite.


    Bios:

    Bridget Anderson is Director of MMB and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol.

    Natasha Carver is Senior Lecturer in the School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol.

    Lucy Donkin is Senior Lecturer in History and History of Art, University of Bristol.

    Florian Scheding is Senior Lecturer in Music, University of Bristol.

    Brendan Smith is Professor of Medieval History, University of Bristol.


    Read more about Rethinking Migration here and follow a link to buy the book or download it for free here.


    Credits:

    Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)

    Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzg

    Music by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com

    Follow us on:

    Bluesky - @mmbuob.bsky.social

    LinkedIn – Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)

    Instagram – mmbuob

    Facebook – Migration Mobilities Bristol

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show More Show Less
    35 mins
  • The good, the bad and the migrant?

    The good, the bad and the migrant?
    Apr 7 2025
    In academia there is a lot of debate about whether immigration controls are inherently unjust. But the focus of everyday conversations about migration and asylum is less on the ethics of borders, and more on the morality of migrants. In this episode our host Bridget Anderson is joined by anthropologists Miriam Ticktin and Juan Zhang to unbox how ideas of vulnerability and deservingness work with understandings of migration and mobility, and what the implications are for politics.Bios:Bridget Anderson is Director of MMB and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls.Miriam Ticktin is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the City University of New York. She writes on migration, borders, humanitarianism, and racial and gendered inequalities. She is MMB's Bristol Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor in 2025 - read more here.Juan Zhang is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Bristol and researchers borders and transnational migration, with a particular focus on the Asian borderlands, cross-border cultural politics and China.Further links for the episode:Miriam's book: Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France. Her most recent book, Against Innocence: Undoing and Remaking the World, is forthcoming with University of Chicago Press. Juan's chapter: 'Why Can’t Chinese Citizens Go Home? Spoiled Citizenship and Stigmatized Returns in Pandemic Times' in Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race (2025).Credits: Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzgMusic by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com Follow us on:Bluesky - @mmbuob.bsky.socialLinkedIn – Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)Instagram – mmbuobFacebook – Migration Mobilities Bristol Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show More Show Less
    34 mins
  • How do people become 'migrants'?

    How do people become 'migrants'?
    Feb 3 2025

    In this episode we ask, how do people become migrantized, and what does this tell us about both migration and citizenship? Bridget invites guests Janine Dahinden and Manoj Dias-Abey to discuss these questions from their different disciplinary perspectives. As a social anthropologist and professor of transnational studies, Janine understands ‘migranticization’ as sets of performative practices that ascribe migratory status to certain people and bodies. Manoj, as a socio-legal scholar, considers how such processes shape the laws and regulations created by state institutions.


    In bringing together these different approaches our guests raise questions about how race, class and concepts of skill play into migrantization. They also ask whether the academic gaze should, in fact, focus more on 'demigrantizing' people by recognising how certain laws, such as those regulating labour migration, impact on citizens more widely.


    Bios:

    Bridget Anderson is Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol. She is the author of Us and Them: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013).

    Janine Dahinden is Professor of Transnational Studies at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland. Her research focuses on (de)migranticization, mobility, transnationalisation and boundary making.

    Manoj Dias-Abey is Senior Lecturer in the University of Bristol Law School. His current research investigates how Britain thinks about and regulates labour migration, and how this has changed over time.


    Further links for the episode:

    Janine’s article on ‘Migranticization’.

    Manoj’s chapter on ‘The Aliens Order 1920, the “Work Permit” and the Making of the National Labour Market’ in the MMB edited volume Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race (available 17th February 2025).


    Credits:

    Produced by Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)

    Edited by Melissa FitzGerald – X @melissafitzg

    Music by Olly Shaw – ollyshawmusic.com

    Follow us on:

    Bluesky - @mmbuob.bsky.social

    LinkedIn – Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB)

    Instagram – mmbuob

    Facebook – Migration Mobilities Bristol

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
    Show More Show Less
    31 mins
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