Nationalism, labour and mobility controls
Public lecture by Professor Bridget Anderson (University of Bristol)
When?
Thursday 1 May
5.30pm – 7.00pm – lecture followed by Q&A
7.00 – 8.00pm – drinks reception
Where?
Lecture: Lecture Theatre G6, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY
Drinks reception: G03, 55-59 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0NU
Join us for this lecture by Professor Bridget Anderson (University of Bristol) on how recognising the banality of citizenship can help reframe debates on migration. The lecture is part of the Migrants and Solidarities research project.
About the lecture:
Across many countries of the world we are experiencing polarization and division in our politics with migration as a flashpoint. Migrants are represented as competitors with citizens for the privileges of membership. In this context, citizenship is a fantasy, offering access to rights and equality, whereas the reality is banal, with many citizens finding themselves trapped in poor work or low benefits and subject to discriminatory treatment. In this presentation I will argue that recognising the banality of citizenship can help to reframe debates on migration. I will begin by asking who counts as a ‘migrant’, showing how political this seemingly neutral category is. I will claim that that public understandings of the migrant as poor and negatively racialised are a reflection of the logics of immigration regimes and that to understand why this has such purchase we need to attend to the glamour of the nation as well as the bureaucracy of the state. I will then consider how rights become visible because they are denied to migrants taking as an example the ‘right to work’ and consider what this tells us about ‘banal citizenship’. I will argue that migration is a lens through which we can better understand socio-economic relations that shape migrants’ and citizens’ experiences alike, and thinking migrants and citizens together, recognising differences, but not assuming them can help us move away from positioning the migrant and citizen as competitors for the privileges of membership and from the corrosion of mistaking deservingness as a measure for justice.
Bridget Anderson is the Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship. She is interested in the relation between migration, race, and nation, historically and in the contemporary world. She takes as her starting point that the ‚migrant‛ and the ‚citizen‛ and the differences between them are constructed in law and in social and political practice. She is particularly interested in how immigration laws make particular kinds of employment relationships and her current research includes the EU funded project PRIME – Protecting Irregular Migrants in Europe. Her recent edited volume: Rethinking Migration: Challenging Borders, Citizenship, Race is published by Bristol University Press and is open access.