Borders

Understanding the nature of the movement of people across borders requires analysis of the nature of borders themselves, as physical, legal and metaphysical constructions. But it also requires consideration of the broad array of impacts – from the personal to the geopolitical – that arise from different kinds of movements across borders.

COMPAS conducts research that addresses current transformations of borders while considering public understandings and meanings of borders such as in the UK. COMPAS has also conducted research across Europe that provides a comparative inventory of data on migratory movements such as irregular migration (stocks and flows). Working with data on ‘clandestine’ migration required in depth consideration of ethical and methodological issues, as well as the factors affecting shifts between legal and ‘illegal’ status among migrant populations.

Other complementary studies have focussed on mixed and transit migration to Europe. The expansion of the European border control regime has moved responsibility from core countries to the peripheral EU countries and their immediate neighbours, such as Ukraine and Turkey. Research therefore investigated clandestine entry to the EU: the institutions, practices, relationships and networks that shape experiences of life on the move, the governance, policies and practices of border controls, and the interplay and dynamics influencing outcomes of migration in sending, transit and destination countries

Blog Posts

Lockdown in India: Exodus as an expression of grievance

Manish Maskara

De-confine Borders: Towards a Politics of Freedom of Movement in the Time of the Pandemic

Charles Heller

Shock Mobility: Convulsions in human migration are having large impacts (Part II)

Biao Xiang

Shock Mobility: Convulsions in human migration are having large impacts (Part I)

Biao Xiang

Researching international student mobility into a post-pandemic future (Part II)

Yi’En Cheng, Peidong Yang & Cora L. Xu

Researching international student mobility into a post-pandemic future (Part I)

Yi’En Cheng, Peidong Yang & Cora L. Xu

The gyroscope-like economy (Part II)

Biao Xiang

The gyroscope-like economy (Part I)

Biao Xiang

Rethinking EU Borders in the time of COVID-19

Elspeth Guild and Didier Bigo

Evacuating the Greek Refugee Camps and strengthening Europe from Below

Julia Schweers and Daniel Kersting

Pandemic challenges for Chinese migrants in Hungary

Pál Nyíri and Fanni Beck

The Marooned Malaise: Covid-19 and Africa’s stolen futures

Loren B Landau

The US – Mexico Border: A testing ground for digital warfare

Erin Harris

Dangerous Digital Liaisons: An inquiry into digital policies regarding migrant smuggling on social media

Johanna Bankston

The Corona-pandemic: from parasitic mobility to convenient crisis

Stephan Scheel

Here we cope, here we observe, here we think and think together: a response to Robin Cohen

Biao Xiang

‘Take me home’: The coronavirus virus and panic mobility

Robin Cohen

Borders in the Time of Coronavirus: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Upended the Global Mobility Paradigm

Gilda Borriello and Asli Salihoglu

From Chain Reaction to Grid Reaction: Mobilities & Restrictions during SARS & Coronavirus

Biao Xiang

Refugia – a new solution for displacement?

COMPAS Communications

Many more to come? Reflections on migration to Europe & migrant policy responses 2015-2019

Sarah Spencer

Furthering Refugia: Engaging with our Critics

Nicholas Van Hear

Does Immigration Enforcement Matter (DIEM) project news

COMPAS Communications

Viewing Life Through the Migration Lens: experiences and thoughts post-MSc

MSc graduates

Permanent Residence and the power of bureaucracy

COMPAS Communications

Common responses to the notion of Migration Studies [MSc guest blog]

Bobbie Mills

A night-time border encounter: Some reflections [MSc guest blog]

Tommaso Trillò

Paradoxically European: how a spike in xenophobia revalues EU citizenship

COMPAS Communications

What is our moral obligation to the stranger?

COMPAS Communications

Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis – field work notes 2016

COMPAS Communications

Mobility, class and country of origin in the Western Balkans

Diana Ihring

Mediterranean Migration Crisis – Mixed Policies, Mixed Results

COMPAS Communications

Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis – field work notes 2015

COMPAS Communications

Leaving Palestine

Nicholas Van Hear

Refugee crisis, compassion and Eastern Europe

Dace Dzenovska

Immigration Acts and health bills

COMPAS Communications

People Move

Ben Doherty

Illegality vs Irregularity

COMPAS Communications

Gender and Migration: Reflecting on the Debate

Bridget Anderson

Sex discrimination and UK immigration law

Catherine Briddick

Securing a Good (Female) Coyote: Women and the Facilitation of Extralegal Border Crossings

Gabriella Sanchez

Gendering the Irregular

Melanie Griffiths

Gender, Migration, ‘Trafficking’ and the Troublesome Relationship between Agency and Force

Julia O'Connell Davidson

Mothers’ Migration Motivations

Brandy Cochrane

Gender, class and migration governance: A labour sending country perspective

Hiranthi Jayaweera

Centering orality: Exploring gendered wartime violence with South Sudanese women elders

Sara Maher

Book Review: The Securitization of Migration and Refugee Women

Angelo Tramountanis

Urbanites: indifferent to difference?

Pier-Luc Dupont

What role does the EU play in influencing the development of integration policy?

Helen McCarthy

Border Crossings and Gender in the Greek Detention System

Mary Bosworth, Sharon Pickering and Andriani Fili

Valorised and Vilified: What Do ‘Citizens’ Do?

William Allen

Spousal Migration, Gender and UK Immigration Law

Helena Wray

Gender, Race, and Immigration Detention

Sarah Turnbull

Tibetan Women and Nuns: What’s Missing in Our Discussion on Borders and Gender?

Bodean Hedwards

‘Victims of Trafficking’ and ‘Foreign Criminals’ – Constructing the state as our (masculine) saviour

Luke de Noronha

Migrant Women’s Health in Spain: A Snapshot of the Consequences of the Royal Decree-Law of Sanitary Regulation 16/2012

Ana Ballesteros Pena and Anna Morero Beltrán

Studying Mobility in a Context of Immobility

Richard Allen

The messiness of research: My experience as a young female researcher at an Italian migrant detention centre

Francesca Esposito

Gender & migration: An introduction and a conversation

COMPAS Communications

Race and Racism

Rachel Humphris

Foreign fighters: time to recognise and study a new type of migration

COMPAS Communications

Migration and the political

Dace Dzenovska

The floating label of ‘the migrant’

COMPAS Communications

Schooling, mobility and belonging

COMPAS Communications

A tale of two cities: Melilla and Calais

COMPAS Communications

What’s in a name? An overview of the latest COMPAS Breakfast Briefing

COMPAS Communications

Italy’s story to tell on services for irregular migrants

Sarah Spencer and Nicola Delvino

The Upward Concentration of Chinese Emigration and the Rise of China

Biao Xiang

The Light of Evidence 3: Continuing the policy debate

COMPAS Communications

The course of true love never did run smooth

Melanie Griffiths

Saving the Lifeline: Studying the Somali diaspora involvement in the 2013-14 campaign

COMPAS Communications

Teaching practitioners about migration: Challenges and opportunities for ASEAN

COMPAS Communications

The Scottish diaspora and Scottish independence

Rob McNeil

Integration: a European research agenda

COMPAS Communications

The Would-Be Migrant

Biao Xiang

The Crisis in Ukraine and its Implications for Migration in Europe

COMPAS Communications

Notes on power in scenes of denunciation

Dace Dzenovska

Health and border control

COMPAS Communications

Re-Thinking ‘Risk’ in Migration

Esra Kaytaz, DPhil Social Anthropology

Final Destination Maghreb: The transformation of transit countries

COMPAS Communications

Barriers to migration: Are policing and fencing the answer?

COMPAS Communications

What we talk about when we talk about immigration

Mikal Mast

From the 2013 Syrian Refugee Conference to the 1938 Conference of Evian: How far have we come?

COMPAS Communications

Defending the rights of migrants – a price worth paying

COMPAS Communications

On borders and a wicked bird

COMPAS Communications

The Good Worker

Dace Dzenovska

Migration in Scotland

Carlos Vargas-Silva

The Labour Market Impacts of Forced Migration (LAMFOR)

Carlos Vargas-Silva

Saudi Arabia and its immigrants

COMPAS Communications

Documenting how immigrants are described in the British press: Why does comprehensiveness matter?

William Allen

Is it family migration if only one family member moves? Reflections on categories of migrants and classifications of migration

COMPAS Communications

Windows: The 21st century migration experience

Biao Xiang

Light of Evidence 2: the wider debate on migration

COMPAS Communications

Holding a mirror to ourselves: British Lifestyle migration

COMPAS Communications

Dream on

Nicholas Van Hear

Migration data and attitudes in the context of the Scottish independence referendum

COMPAS Communications

Stuck in traffic: How helpful is the trafficking framework?

COMPAS Communications

“We want to hear from you” (or how informing works in a liberal democracy)

Dace Dzenovska

Immigration and Welfare: Beyond Us and Them

COMPAS Communications

What Kinds of Immigrants Come or Stay? Illegality and UK Tabloid Portrayal of Immigrants

William Allen

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – a film about migrants?

Mikal Mast

The infrastructural turn: the Chinese example

Biao Xiang

Before international research cooperation lies the UK border

COMPAS Communications

It’s about time

Marthe Achtnich and Roger Norum, COMPAS DPhil students

The economics of forced migration

Carlos Vargas-Silva

Five principles of integration: policies and inclusion

COMPAS Communications

Labour immigration policy: What do we want, and why?

COMPAS Communications

New Lives and Dreams: The Results

COMPAS Communications

Tourism and migration: two kinds of mobility

COMPAS Communications

The Love of Learning: Migrants and Education

COMPAS Communications

From the Great Wall to maze pipelines

Biao Xiang

Dr Who and The Migrants

COMPAS Communications

Recipe for a diaspora: take one millionaire…

COMPAS Communications

Damned if you’re a migrant, damned if you’re not: Sri Lankan female domestic workers

COMPAS Communications

The Light of Evidence

COMPAS Communications

Are there such people as “migrants”?

Biao Xiang

No Way Out, No Way In

COMPAS Communications

Clandestine migration in the Greek-Turkish border region: shifting routes and complex control infrastructures

COMPAS Communications

Dispatches from Chicago: The home of political science for four days every April

COMPAS Communications

Gypsies, tramps and thieves?

Rob McNeil

Border Crossing: Material Culture & Experience

Marisa Macari, COMPAS DPhil Student

Is there such a thing as migration?

Biao Xiang

Irregular Migration and Fundamental Rights in the EU: a continuing controversy

COMPAS Communications

Renationalization?

Biao Xiang

Shifting powers: two decades of migration and global turbulence

Nicholas Van Hear

A sending country perspective: Imagining Europe from the outside

COMPAS Communications

Legal but Unfair: The High Stakes of the UK Immigration Detention System

Stephanie Silverman, DPhil Politics and International Relations

Books

Refugia: Radical solutions to mass displacement

Robin Cohen, Nicholas Van Hear

Unravelling Europe’s ‘migration crisis’

Heaven Crawley, Franck Düvell, Katharine Jones, Simon McMahon and Nando Sigona

Policy Discourses on Irregular Migration in Germany and the United Kingdom

COMPAS Communications

Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls

COMPAS Communications

Reports

European Cities and Migrants with Irregular Status: Municipal initiatives for the inclusion of irregular migrants in the provision of services

Nicola Delvino

Destination Europe? Understanding the dynamics and drivers of Mediterranean migration in 2015

Heaven Crawley, Franck Düvell, Katharine Jones, Simon McMahon and Nando Sigona

The COMPAS Approach

Rob McNeil and COMPAS Communications

DIEM: The Policy Framework for Immigration Enforcement in the UK

COMPAS Communications

An Evidence Base on Migration and Integration in London

COMPAS Communications

Journal Articles

Transitory Legality: The Health Implication of Ending DACA

Marie L. Mallet & Lisa Garcia Bedolla

Push-pull plus: reconsidering the drivers of migration

Nicholas Van Hear, Oliver Bakewell & Katy Long

Clean skins: Making the e-Border security assemblage

William Allen

Visions of Refugia: Territorial and transnational solutions to mass displacement

Robin Cohen & Nicholas Van Hear

EU Migration to and from the UK After Brexit

Carlos Vargas-Silva

A Hermeneutical Approach to European Bordering

COMPAS Communications

New Narratives from the EU External Border – Humane Refoulement?

COMPAS Communications

Bordering Practices in the UK Welfare System

Bastian Vollmer, Simon Güntner, Sue Lukes & Jo Wilding

“We are Sitting on a Time Bomb”: A Multiperspectival Approach to Inter-National Development at an East African Border

William Allen

Cubans in the United States and Spain: The Diaspora Generational Divide

Mette Louise Berg, Susan Eckstein

Distant cities, travelling tales and segmented young lives: making and remaking youth exclusion across time and place

Jo-Anne Dillabough, Julie McLeod, & Caroline Oliver

Bordering Encounters, Sociality and Distribution of the Ability to Live A Normal Life

Dace Dzenovska

Book Review – Territoriality and Migration in the EU Neighbourhood-Spilling over the Wall

COMPAS Communications

“I Am From Busia!”: Everyday Trading and Health Service Provision at the Kenya–Uganda Border as Place-Making Activities

William Allen

Making Light of Borders: The Case of the External EU Border

COMPAS Communications

Migrant Labour in Kazakhstan: A Cause for Concern?

Bridget Anderson, Blanka Hancilová

Labor Shortages and U.S. Immigration Reform: Promises and Perils of an Independent Commission

Martin Ruhs, Philip Martin

Editorial: Why No Borders?

Bridget Anderson, Nandita Sharma, Cynthia Wright

Gendering Borders: An Exchange

Bridget Anderson, Eithne Luibhéid

Working Papers

Nonaligned Mobilities and the Post-Yugoslav Political Imaginary

Helena Ratté

Efficient Discrimination: On How Governments Use Artificial Intelligence in the Immigration Sphere to Create and Fortify ‘Invisible Border Walls’

Roxana Akhmetova

Family Separation and Family Detention: The Punitive Construction of a False Binary along the U.S.-Mexico Border

Julia Romani Yanoff

De-confine Borders: Towards a Politics of Freedom of Movement in the Time of the Pandemic

Charles Heller

Internal borders and migration in India

Zovanga L. Kone, Maggie Y. Liu, Aaditya Mattoo, Çağlar Özden & Siddharth Sharma

Chiefs, Migrants and the State: Mobility in the Ghana-Togo Borderlands

Nathalie Raunet

Call me illegal: The semantic struggle over seeking asylum in Australia

Ben Doherty

Foreign Detachment: The Making and Unmaking of Cross-Border Ties

Roger Waldinger

The Christianisation of Afghan and Iranian Transit Migrants in Istanbul: Encounters at the Biopolitical Border

Shoshana Fine

Exclusionary Rhetoric Expansionist Policies? Right-wing Parties and Immigration Policy-making in Italy

Elif Çetin

Labor Shortages and US Immigration Reform: Promises and Perils of an Independent Commission

Martin Ruhs, Philip Martin

“To Belong or Not to Belong”: Is that the Question?’ Negotiating Belonging in Multi-Ethnic London

Ellie Vasta, Sofia Hamaz

Migrant Labour in Kazakhstan: A Cause for Concern?

Bridget Anderson, Blanka Hancilova

Legality and Labour: Chinese Migration, Neoliberalism and the State in the UK and China

Biao Xiang

How to Balance Rights and Responsibilities on Asylum at the EU’s Southern Border of Italy and Libya

Richard Allen

The Exclusion of Asylum Seekers in Europe

COMPAS Communications

Trends and Impacts of Migrant Transnationalism

COMPAS Communications

Other Publications

Research Brief

Understanding the dynamics of migration to Greece and the EU: Drivers, decisions and destinations

Heaven Crawley, Franck Duvell, Katharine Jones and Dimitris Skleparis

Research Brief

Unpacking a Rapidly Changing Scenario

Heaven Crawley, Franck Duvell, Nando Sigona, Simon McMahon, Katharine Jones

Near Futures online article

Eastern Europe, the Moral Subject of the Migration/Refugee Crisis, and Political Futures

Dace Dzenovska

Feature article

Tough but Humane? The Hypocrisy of Migration Control in the UK and Beyond

COMPAS Communications

Research Resources Paper

Humanitarian Problems Relating to Migration in the Turkish-Greek Border Region: The crucial role of civil society organisations

Max Schaub

Breakfast Briefing

Migration policy and skills policy: substitutes or complements?

Jonathan Portes

Projects

An Evidence Base on Migration and Integration in London

COMPAS Communications | 2009

At the fringes of Europe: Transit migration in Ukraine and Turkey (FringeMig)

COMPAS Communications | 2006

Border Fence: Mobility, Infrastucture, and Geopolitics in the Latvian-Russian Borderlands

Dace Dzenovska | December 2017 – December 2019

Border Security: Discourses and Practices in the UK

COMPAS Communications | April 2013 – 2016

Counting the Uncountable: Data and Trends across Europe – Irregular Migration in the UK (Clandestino)

COMPAS Communications | September 2007 - August 2009

Does Immigration Enforcement Matter (DIEM)?

COMPAS Communications | November 2013 - July 2017

The Coronavirus and Mobility Forum

Biao Xiang |

The employment and working conditions of migrant domestic workers in South East Asia

COMPAS Communications | August 2015 - June 2016

The ethics and politics of the refugee crisis

COMPAS Communications | May 2016- Mar 2017

Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis (MEDMIG)

COMPAS Communications | Sep 2015 - Aug 2016