Project Publications

Griffiths, M. 2020. "My passport is just my way out of here." Mixed-immigration Status Families, Immigration Enforcement and the Citizenship Implications. Identities, v.28(1), pp.18-36.

Drawing on the accounts of British female partners of ‘deportable’ men, this article examines the impact of immigration enforcement measures on the sense of security and membership of the citizens close to the migrants targeted. It argues that the women discovered longstanding gendered and classed barriers to operationalising their citizenship privileges, which led to reconfigurations of their relationships with their government as well as understanding of the institution of citizenship. Their accounts illustrate how immigration controls produce and discipline citizens, as well as migrants, exposing the internal hierarchies of citizenship.

 

Griffiths, M., 2017. Seeking asylum and the politics of family. Families, Relationships and Societies, v.6(1), pp.153-156.

Gender identities and family roles and relationships have an important – but controversial and contested – place in the British asylum system. Drawing on the experience of a refused asylum seeker, who I call Martin, this article considers the various ways in which 'family' arose in the long course of his asylum claim: from the loss of his parents, to falling in love and creating new family ties in the UK. Through Martin's narrative of his experiences of the immigration system, and the realities and aftermath of prison and immigration detention, the article considers the politics, tensions and hurdles of family ties for asylum seekers and those facing forced removal from the UK."

 

Griffiths, M., 2017. Foreign, criminal: a doubly damned modern British folk-devil. Citizenship Studies, v.21(5), pp.527-546.

Drawing on qualitative research with immigration detainees, deportees and irregular migrants, the article considers some of the many faces of the Foreign Criminal and illuminates their racialised, classed and gendered natures. It argues that a twin set of developments – coalescing around Operation Nexus and curtailed Article 8 right protections – work together to taint a growing number of non-citizens with criminality, whilst simultaneously undermining their claim to belong