Oska Paul
Profile
I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Warwick, and an ESRC scholar. I have been involved in migrant-justice initiatives as an activist, a legal advice professional, and a researcher over the past six years in London and Athens. I am currently based in Athens where I am conducting my fieldwork.
Thesis
The initiatives and political agency of migrants in Greece are receiving growing academic acknowledgement. These analyses often frame these enactments in terms of ‘active citizenship’, ‘urban commoning’, ‘migratory activisms’ or ‘migrant resistance’. However, the gendered dimensions of care that emerge from migrant-led initiatives in Greece have yet to be fully explored, especially with regards to the practises, lived experiences and agency of displaced men. My project attempts to address this by engaging with migrant men in Athens as gendered subjects who experience and respond to social injustices. Specifically, I argue that attention needs to be paid to men’s caring practises as a political form of expression. This approach draws on black feminist literatures, which emphasise care work as an important, and often overlooked, political practice of solidarity, resistance and community preservation. I find critical purchase in expanding this framework to Athens, where masculine practises of care are central to how men deliver and conceive of effective assistance and resistance. Focusing on a ‘politics of care’ helps shine a light on the less visible ways men in Athens enact themselves as political subjects, and the implications this has for their intersectional masculine identities and representations. In exploring these themes, I will document the emergence, trajectories and contemporary existences of migrant organising in the city, especially the ways different movements have overlapped, eclipsed, coexisted or missed each other. The project will contribute to the political sociology of race and gender, as well as borders and migration.
Research interests
- Migrant Activism and Solidarity
- Men & Masculinities
- Decolonial and postcolonial theory
- Intersectionality and Feminist Theory
- Participative Methodologies
Supervisors
Professor Akwugo Emejulu, Dept. of Sociology
Associate Professor Julia Welland, PAIS
Publications
Paul, O. (2025). "Enacting a Politics of Care: Men’s Responses to Displacement in Athens" in (eds.) Myrttinen, H., Laruni, E., Lewis, C., Schulz, P., Touquet, H. and Yousaf. F. Routledge Handbook of Masculinities, Conflict and Peacebuilding. Routledge: London.
Paul, O., & Masood, M. (2024). Gendered Vulnerability in Necropolitical Bordering: Displaced Men’s Material and Affective Abandonment in Greece. Gender & Society, 38(4), 493-522.Paul, O. (2023). Expanding Sanctuary: The City of Sanctuary Movement in London. Critical Sociology, doi: 10.1177/08969205231151599
Paul, O. (2023). Expanding sanctuary: the City of Sanctuary movement in London. Critical Sociology, 49(7-8), 1307-1321.
Paul, O. and Squire, V. (2021). City Report Lewisham (London): How to challenge discriminatory authorities. Moving Cities Project. Robert Bosch Stiftung. Available at: https://cms.moving-cities.eu/uploads/Lewisham_City_Report_4269ca0fc9.pdf
Paul, O. (2018). Men At Work: The role gender in refugee men's solidarity enactments in Athens. University College London's Migrant Research Unit - Working Papers.
Paul, O. (2018). Refugee-to-refugee humanitarianism. Open Democracy.
Community Engagement
Kypseli Mundial: Community Football Tournament & Cultural Festival. Athens, 2024.
African Activism in Athens (Exhibition), 2024
Conference Show with Mamorinos Segbo, Migrant Men’s Politics of Care feat. Oska Paul.Movement Radio Athens (Onassis Stegi). Podcast aired on 25/09/2022.
Why Men? Series for Mazi Housing Project, Athens #1 The Vulnerability Framework, #2 The Skype System, # Geographical Restriction, #4 Housing
Qualifications
Social Science Research MA. (2021), University of Warwick (Distinction).
Global Migration, Human Geography MSc. (2018), University College London (Distinction).
Archaeology and Anthropology BA. (2013), University of Cambridge (Second Class, First Degree).
Level 2 Senior Immigration Advisor (2020), Immigration and Asylum Law Accreditation Law Society