Professor of International Politics

Deputy Head of Department

Director of Research

Co-Convenor, Warwick Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration network - BREM 

Email: V.J.Squire@warwick.ac.uk

Bluesky: @vickisquire.bsky.social

Tel: +44 (0)24761 51977

Room: E1.13, Social Sciences Building

Advice and Feedback Hours: By appointment (email address above)

Profile

I joined PAIS in 2012, following my position as RCUK (Research Councils UK) Research Fellow at the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance, Open University, UK. Prior to that, I was ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. I completed my PhD and my MA studies as part of the Ideology and Discourse Analysis programme at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK, with a visiting studentship at Australian National University. I have also held visiting professor positions at Sapienza University, Italy, and at Soka University, Japan.

Research interests

My research cuts across the fields of migration, citizenship, humanitarian and border studies. I focus on the policies and practices through which migration is governed, the dynamics and consequences of humanitarian interventions in contexts of displacement, and the politics of migration and solidarity activism. I have undertaken this work in various contexts, including the US-Mexico border region, the Mediterranean and Balkans, Northern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

Funded by the AHRC, my recent project Data and Displacement is a collaborative project with colleagues from University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and University of Juba, South Sudan. The research addressed the practical and ethical questions that arise from the focus on data-driven humanitarian targeting, focusing on the experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan. You can read the project report here. This project is currently ongoing in the form of an ESRC IAA grant on Data Literacies in Displacement or DLiD.

During 2015-2019, I led a large-scale qualitative ESRC project with people making precarious journeys across the Mediterranean. This culminated in a co-authored book published with Manchester University Press in 2021: Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe's ‘Migrant Crisis’. During 2015-2018 I also held a Leverhulme Fellowship examining solidarity activism in the Mediterranean. This research was published as a book with Cambridge University Press in 2020: Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity. I also have a new co-edited book with Palgrave Macmillan - Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away - as part of the British Academy project on Making Home Away (Lost and Found? A Digital Archive of Testimonies of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement - led by Dr Yasmine Shamma, University of Reading with Vicki Squire and Suzan Ilcan).

I have published widely on the themes of asylum, sanctuary, migration, displacement, humanitarianism, border struggles and solidarity activism. I have also presented lectures by invitation across the world, including in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and the US, and held the role of Co-Editor of the flagship International Studies Association journal International Political Sociology from 2016-2021. Together with Professor Dallal Stevens and Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, I am Convenor of the Warwick BREM (Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration) Network.

Teaching and supervision

I contribute to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules within PAIS, and have wide-ranging experience in teaching across Politics, International Studies and the social sciences more widely. I also have extensive experience of supervising PhD students, and welcome proposals on any of the above or related topics. Students supervised to completion include:

• Dr Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, Performing Survival: Venzuelans' Migratory Journeys along the Andean Corridor (2023)
• Dr Francesca Melhuish, “There is no status quo”: ‘Crisis’ and Nostalgia in the Vote Leave Campaign (2021)
• Dr Shannon Mathieu, Gender, Intervention Policy, and Right to Protect (2019)
• Dr António Ferraz De Oliveira, The Politics of Territory in Early Anarchist Thought (2018)
• Dr Veit Schwab, Discursive Borders in EUrope (2018)
• Dr Lorenzo Vianelli, Governing Asylum Seekers: Logistics, Differentiation and Failure in the European Union’s Reception Regime (2018)
• Dr Helen Arfvidsson, On Burning Cars, Concrete and Citizenship (2014)
• Dr Jennifer Bagelman, City of Sanctuary: A State of Deferral (2012)

Recent publications

My recent works include:

• Jones, B. and Squire, V. (2025) “You already know enough: Certainty and Ignorance in Data-Driven Humanitarianism”, Geopolitics, DOI https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2025.2463005 
• Squire, V. (2024) "Global Citizenship in the Making? Generating an Inventory of Migratory Claims", Citizenship Studies, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13621025.2024.2324776 
• Squire, V. Akànle, O., Jones, B., Logo, K. and Porto de Albuquerque, J. (2024) “Engaging Data Literacies in Displacement” Journal of Humanitarian Affairs, 5(3): 12-22. Available at:
  https://www.manchesterhive.com/view/journals/jha/5/3/article-p12.xml
• Squire, V. and Alozie, M.T. (2023) “Coloniality and frictions: Data-driven humanitarianism in North-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan”, Big Data and Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951723116
• Shamma, Y., Ilcan, S., Squire, V. and Underhill, H. (Eds.) (2023) Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away (Cham: Springer).
• Ilcan, S., Squire, V. and Stierl, M. (2022) Theme Issue: Bordering Practices, Environment Planning C: Politics and Space 40(5), August 2022.
• Squire, V. (2021) “Unruly migrations, abolitionist alternatives”, Behemoth 14(3): 14-24, access for free here
• Squire, V., Perkowski, N., Stevens, D. and Vaughan-Williams, N. (2021) Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe's 'Migrant Crisis' (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
• Squire, V. (2020) Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
• Squire, V. (2020) “Migration and the politics of the 'human': Confronting the privileged subjects of IR”, International Relations, 34(3): 290-308, access for free here
• Squire, V. (2020) “Hidden geographies of the Mediterranean migration crisis”, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space.
• Squire, V. (2019) “A milestone missed? The global compact on migration and the limits of solidarity”, Global Affairs, 5(2): 155-162.
• Squire, V. (2018) “Researching precarious migrations: Qualitative strategies toward a positive transformation of the politics of migration”, British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20(2): 441-458.
• Squire, V. (2018) “Mobile solidarities and precariousness at City Plaza: Beyond vulnerable and disposable lives” Studies in Social Justice, 12(1): 111-132.
• Perkowski, N. and Squire, V. (2018) “The anti-policy of European anti-smuggling as a site of contestation in the Mediterranean migration 'crisis'”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(3): 400-417.
• Squire, V. (2017) “Divided Seas, Parallel Lives”, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 45(1&2): 69-89.
• Squire, V. (2017) “Governing migration through death in Europe and the US: Identification, burial, and the crisis of modern humanism”, European Journal of International Relations, 23(3): 513-532.
• Squire, V. (2017) “Unauthorised migration beyond structure/agency? Acts, interventions, effects”, Politics, 37(3): 254-272.

For a full list of my publications, please see my Publications page.