Who do we think we are‪?‬ Professor Michaela Benson

Countries around the world have been quick to crow about the provisions they are putting in place to welcome those displaced by the war in Ukraine. Yet, all might not be what it seems.
In this first episode of Beyond the Headlines, hosts Dr Ala Sirriyeh and Professor Michaela Benson are in conversation with Dr Yvonne Su, York University to examine what the headlines announcing a warm welcome to Ukrainian refugees in Poland and the UK shield from view. We explore how even among those displaced by the war, not everyone has equal access to leaving Ukraine. Race, gender and sexuality can all shape people’s fate at the border, leaving some with only unsafe routes out of the conflict-ridden country.
And we consider the narrative that presents Ukrainians as ‘good refugees’, within the wider context of a politics of migration that otherwise casts many of those seeking new lives abroad as illegitimate and underserving, and within states that have readily deployed deterrents and push backs against migrants.
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.
In this episode we cover …
1 Ukraine war and refugees
2 Borders and inequalities
3 ‘Good refugees’
Quote
What everyone is hearing is just the numbers of refugees that Poland's accepting or Germany's accepting, or the UK is not accepting, in this case, but then we don't like you're saying we don't look behind the headlines and into what's happening on the ground.
— Dr Yvonne Su
Find out more
Find Yvonne on Twitter or her website
Read her writing on Poland’s border propaganda and anti-immigration sentiments; the ‘good, bad and ideal’ refugees; and how standard humanitarian responses lead to LGBTQ and trans refugees falling between the cracks.
Our headline ‘How European response to Ukraine refugees differs from UK’ The Guardian, 11 March 2022
Ala’s thoughts on the politics of compassion and the channel crossings
Michaela’s writing (with Professor Nando Sigona) about the UK’s response to and provisions for Ukrainian refugees.
For something a bit different, we recommend this episode of Academic Aunties which features Yvonne in conversation with Dr. Ethel Tungohan about Turning Red.
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What is the UK’s Nationality and Borders Act? How does it relate to previous acts concerned with nationality and immigration legislation? What is the back story to some of the central changes that this act introduces? We cover all of this and more in this bumper episode to mark the start of Series 2 of Who do we think we are?
Presenter Michaela Benson introduces the Nationality and Borders Act and how this sits in a longer history of Acts which considers changes to nationality and immigration legislation alongside one another. She also joins podcast researcher George Kalivis in the archive, where they discuss the behind closed doors responses of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about what Britain should do in respect to the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s. We’re joined by Trent Lamont Miller and Dave Varney of the British Overseas Territories Citizenship campaign to discuss the impetus behind this campaign and the journey to get legislation changed to allow the children of British Overseas Territories citizens born outside of marriage abroad to be entitled for this citizenship status. But as our conversation with Fizza Qureshi (CEO of Migrants Rights Network) reveals, the success of this campaign for BOTCs is bittersweet in the context of the predominantly bleak consequences of this act.
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.
In this episode we cover …
Nationality and Borders Act Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees British Overseas Territories Citizens Refugee and migrant rights Quote
When you have no effective safe routes to come to the UK, or where you have those routes, and they're measly, in terms of the numbers that are available to people, or they're really narrow in their scope, I mean, what other ways are people going to have to resort to, apart from getting on a boat to entering the UK?
—Fizza Qureshi, CEO Migrants Rights Network
 
This just makes no sense to me because my British BOTC father did not marry my foreign born mother ... every child has copies of both parents DNA, they have two sides of the family tree for the UK Government to take a pair of scissors and cut away one part of that DNA and family tree and then say you're not valid, you're not welcome, go away. It's deeply hurtful.— Trent Lamont Miller, BOTC Campaign
 
Find out more
BOTC Campaign on Twitter and Online
Migrants’ Rights Network Online, Twitter and Instagram
 
Read more
Rieko Karatani, Britishness Reconsidered
Margaret Thatcher reluctant to give boat people refuge in Britain
 
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Mass shooting in the US have been headlines news over the past month. The pattern? White gunmen opening fire in supermarkets, schools and public spaces, killing and injuring black, brown and hispanic people going about their daily business. Journalists, commentators and politicians have rallied to try and explain these horrific incidents, identifying the role of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory in motivating the actions of lone shooters. But what do these explanations overlook and shield from view? 
In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Aaron Winter, who researches racism, hate crime, the far right and right-wing extremism and terrorism, to take a close up look at the headlines reporting on shootings in Buffalo, where a white man opened fire in a supermarket in a predominantly black neighbourhood murdering 10 people. We discuss the history of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory and related white supremacist conspiracy theories as they plays out in different historical and political contexts. The problems with the narrative of the ‘lone, white, gunman’. And we consider the relationship between these horrific incidents, structural and institutional racism, and the mainstreaming of illiberal approaches to migration in the US and UK, including thinking about Brexit and the Hostile Environment. 
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.
 
In this episode we cover …
1 Mass shootings as racist violence
2 The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and white supremacy
3 Mainstreaming the far right and illiberal political approaches to migration
 
Quote
Why do they never call it terrorism when white people do it? Well they do. They often do to remove it to compartmentalise it and to remove it from all the mainstream systemic and institutional white supremacy that needs to keep going.
Aaron Winter  
Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?
Find Aaron on Twitter or Google Scholar
If you want to find out more about mainstreaming the far right, we recommend his book Reactionary Democracy co-authored with Aurelien Mondon
Our headline Great Replacement: The Conspiracy Theory racist violence by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours was published in Al Jazeera 18 May 2022
You might also be interested in Michaela’s writing on Brexit focussed on the question what’s wrong with the narrative of the left behind
And we also wanted to give some love to this excellent paper by Maria Cecilia Hwang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas about the Atlanta shooting where eight people, predominantly Asian women, were murdered.
 
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Commonplace understandings of citizenship equate it with equality – at least among those holding the same citizenship. But looking the processes by which national citizenships develop shows that gaining equality for some was achieved at the expense of others, who might never be considered as equal. 
How might shifting scale to the global transform how we think about the development of British citizenship? Join us as we explore the relationship between the development of national citizenships and global social inequalities. Presenter Michaela Benson reflects on what is overlooked in the focus on the equalising potential of citizenship. George Kalivis dusts off reports relating to Margaret Thatcher’s visit to India in 1981, and how proposed changes in British nationality legislation were received there. And Michaela’s joined by Manuela Boatcă, Professor in Sociology and Head of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg to discuss how the formation of nation-states and the development of citizenship was caught up in the production of global social inequalities that persist in the present-day. And we discuss a range of examples that include investment citizenship, Brexit, the European Union and much, much more. 
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 
 
In this episode we cover … 
1 Citizenship and the production of global inequalities past and present
2 Gender, race and citizenship
3 Brexit and the European Union
 
Quote 
What a Western passport does is it grants visa free access to the vast majority of countries in the world. Basically, it's a ticket to global social mobility. Now in turn, it is much more difficult for women for LGBTQ individuals and for racial minorities to escape. The limitations are of the citizenship that they receive at birth, especially when they're born in a poor country. Unlike these investors, they women and feminised others have no option or to get access to visa free travel
— Manuela Boatcă
 
Find out more
Find out more about Manuela on her website and on Twitter 
Read her paper Thinking Europe Otherwise and her work on the coloniality of citizenship with co-author Julia Roth
Rieko Karatani, Defining British Citizenship
Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain
Gurminder Bhambra, Citizens and Others
Call to action
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In May 2012 Home Secretary Theresa May vowed to create ‘a really hostile environment for illegal migrants’, heralding in a set of policies which require landlords, employers, healthcare workers and others to check people’s immigration documents, which creates a barrier to accessing work, housing, healthcare, banking and other services. Most of these measures were introduced through the Immigration Act 2014 and expanded in the Immigration Act 2016. But what has been the impact of the decade-long political project to make the UK ‘tough on immigration’? 
In this episode Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Zrinka Bralo, CEO Migrants Organise. From a starting point of recent headlines focussed on 10 years of the Hostile Environment, they discuss how this made visible structural racism within the UK, brought borders into the everyday lives of migrants, and how it has become normalised, working insidiously through the language used to talk about migration. From the Rwanda plan and channel crossing pushbacks, to the public welcome of little Amal and outpouring of charity around Grenfell, Zrinka calls for migrant justice and the need to build bridges not walls.
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.
In this episode we cover …
The Hostile Environment Everyday bordering Migrant justice Quote
What happens to immigrants is just a dress rehearsal to what happens to all of us. And if we're not awake, and alert and acting, the human rights are going to be taken and taken away from us, and we're not going to be paying attention.
— Zrinka Bralo
Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?
 
Find Zrinka on Twitter at migrants organise an award winning grassroots migrant justice platform or in this article on ‘Little Amal, Channel deaths and cruelty by design’
For more about the hostile environment:
Kamila Shamsie’s lecture on a decade of the hostile environment  Colin Yeo’s blog  ‘Go home, The politics of immigration controversies’ a book by Hannah Jones et al  This book by Maya Goodfellow Our headline ‘Home Office still has no evidence to show hostile environment policy is working, report finds’ by May Bulman was published in The Independent 17 June 2020
Find more from Michaela on the Windrush Deportation Scandal in this episode of Who do we think we are?
To discover more about the concept of everyday bordering we suggest this article by Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and Kathryn Cassidy.
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In June 2022, the headlines in the UK were full of news about the Rwanda plan. As an ECHR ruling halted the first deportation flight scheduled to depart from Rwanda, from the Prince of Wales to the Archbishop of Canterbury it was the high-profile opponents of the scheme to offshore the UK’s responsibilities to those seeking asylum that caught the attention of the press. But this public outpouring of resistance to bordering did not emerge from nowhere. It sits on years of resistance and protest from the grassroots and within local communities. Professor Alison Phipps, UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow, and Tawona Sitholé (AKA Ganyamatope), Poet-in-Residence for the Glasgow Refugee, Asylum and Migration Network join Michaela and Ala to go beyond the headlines to look into the roles of local communities in resistance to bordering. Taking local community action in Glasgow as a starting point, they explore everyday acts of resistance, the connections between solidarities movements around the UK, and the political potential of poetry and storytelling.
You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.
 
In this episode we cover …
1 The Rwanda Deportation Scheme
2 Glasgow and the Kenmure Street Protests
3 Migrant solidarity across the UK
 
Quote
[I]t isn't the stopping of the Rwanda flight that led to the publication of the Bill of Rights … that bill should have been unthinkable. And it has been thinkable because vested interests wish to see the removal of human rights from large swathes of the population, in the interests of vested in offshored capital, and outsourcing as a way of thinking about human beings and human beings not as human beings, but as human capital.
— Alison Phipps
 
Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?
Our headline ‘Monarchy, celebrity and clergy’ was published in The Guardian, 14 June 2022
 
Alison Phipps is on Twitter at The University of Glasgow. Read her thoughts on the Rwanda Plain in this blogpost “The border is a Colonial Wound: The Rwanda Deal and State Trafficking in People” You can also hear more from her here The Tories’ Rwanda plans have failed – what now?
 
Tawona Sitholé (AKA Ganyamatope) is on Twitter or at Glasgow Refugee, asylum and migrant network. Find more of his work at seeds of thought.
 
The poems performed in the episode are words and Border crossing in Togo
 
To learn more about activism in Glasgow we recommend, this article  on ‘The festival of resistance’ a year on from Kenmure Street protests, this article on the protests against the Rwanda plans and this blog on the Glasgow girls and Roza Salih’s journey to becoming a candidate for the Scottish Parliament election.
 
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Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.
To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.