SSAHE webinar 21 October 2024 5-6:30 UK time

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The new Labour Government announced the termination of the controversial Rwanda Plan as one of its first measures, giving some hope that it might have a better approach to managing migration that is consistent with basic human rights. But it also started the process of getting its Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill onto the statute books in double quick time.

The Bill aims to establish a control framework which is aligned with the counter-terrorism powers, already strongly criticised by civil liberty defenders. Whilst the details of the planned legislation are still to be seen, statements by the Home Secretary have made it clear that they will facilitate a more rigorous in-country enforcement regime, complete with raids on workplaces, the detention of people considered to be in breach of regulations, and swift deportations.

It needs to be asked at the onset whether these plans amount to any real change to the hostile environment scheme which underpinned the policies of the last Conservative Government, or will rather aim at their continuation in a slightly modified form?  In either case, are there any reasons to think that these policies are any more likely to achieve their stated goals of significantly reduced net migration that their Conservative precursors?   Most importantly, what fresh conflicts over the shape and direction of immigration lie on the immediate horizon as the new measures roll out?

These issues will be considered in SSAHE’s next webinar to be held on 21 October at 5 pm.

Our panel on this occasion will consist of Zoe Bantleman, Legal Director of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, and Professor Nando Sigona, Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at Birmingham University, introduced by Professor Nira Yuval Davis and Professor Eleonore Kofman

Speaker biographies

Zoe Bantleman is Legal Director of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA), a barrister, and an editor of the Journal of Immigration, Asylum & Nationality Law.

Nando Sigona is Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham, and Director of IRiS. His research, commentary and writing focuses on irregular migration; statelessness; youth and family migration; Romani politics and anti-Gypsyism; asylum in Europe and the Mediterranean region; intra-EU mobility and the making of EU citizenship.

Eleonore Kofman is Professor of Social Policy in the School of Law at Middlesex University. She is co-Director of the UKRI’s Migration and Displacement stream, co-Investigator of the project Gendered Dynamics of Labour Migrations, and an IMISCOE board member.

Nira Yuval-Davis is Professor Emeritus, Honorary Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. She has written widely on intersected gendered nationalisms, racisms, fundamentalisms, citizenships, identities, belonging/and everyday bordering as well as on situated intersectionality and dialogical epistemology.