The Vulnerable State

This project explores the ambivalent and shifting governance of socially marginalised groups in the criminal and administrative justice domains. Alongside the punitive discourses and practices that have long dominated the governance of marginalised groups in England (and elsewhere), in the last decades we can also observe an emphasis on safeguarding and care emerging in various areas of law and public policy. While the former orientation focuses on danger, blame and punishment (the ‘punitive turn’), the latter stresses vulnerability, empathy and protection (the ‘humanitarian turn’).

More details are available from The Vulnerable State project website.

Policing Borderscapes: Limits, Dilemmas, and Contradictions of Border Work in the COVID Era

The project explores the shifting and ambivalent logics of border control in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. The pandemic made apparent the limits, tensions, and contradictions of border control as a form of governance. Border closures and securitisation reinscribed the sovereign state and its exclusionary potential, often exacerbating the vulnerabilities of migrant populations. Such exclusionary logic sometimes dovetailed uneasily with efforts to provide humanitarian assistance.

Through a multi-sited ethnography in three critical border areas (the UK-France maritime border, the Spain-Morocco land border, and the Chile-Bolivia land border), this project investigates how border control officers navigate the contradictory logics of border work between control and care. It will offer unique insights on emerging forms of humanitarian governance of precarious populations around the world, and the challenges for the exercise of state power that they evince. Through an innovative methodology and a carefully crafted dissemination plan, the project will lay the foundations for an ambitious research programme on state power in a globalised world.

Principal Investigators: Ana Aliverti; CoIs: Elisa García España and Roberto Dufraix

This project has been funded by the British Academy (SG2122\210082).

Policing the Borders Within: Law Enforcement in a Global Age

This project documents existing arrangements and practices in the policing of immigration status, and examines the everyday operation of immigration-police cooperation in England under the remit of Operation Nexus. Nexus aims to bring together operational and intelligence capabilities and resources in the police and immigration services to deal effectively with offending by foreign national citizens, reduce costs involved in pursuing them through the criminal justice system, and enhance public security.

Focused on two major regional police forces, the project will evaluate the joint enforcement operation between the police and the regional branches of the Home Office’s Immigration Compliance and Enforcement team. The ultimate objective of Ana’s research is to document and scrutinize how the new policy emphasis on foreign nationals in British domestic policing has brought to the fore the role of the police in mediating belonging and has legitimized extraterritorial interventions. Drawing on policing scholarship and post-colonial theory, her research will offer new insights on the internationalization of criminal justice and will chart a new, exciting research agenda on policing, mobility and globalization.

This project has been generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ESRC and the University of Warwick’s Impact Fund.