The School of Law recently held a research symposium on the theme of ‘Hostile Environment’: Migration and Refugees in Modern Times. The event was hosted by the School’s Families and Children research cluster to showcase its work in this area.
There was a specific focus on children and young people including unaccompanied minors, detention of minors, and refugee young people. There was also a paper on the home-making practices of Afghan migrant mothers in Britain. Scholars presented findings from their empirical research to help promote theoretical and policy insights. The symposium invitation was extended to individuals and groups outside the college, and the event witnessed a total of 55 participants from academia, policy and practice.
The full programme was as follows:
Dr Pinar Canga (School of Law, Royal Holloway) - “Immigration Detention of Minors in the United Kingdom and Turkey: Assessing the Predictive Value of Human Rights Compliance Theory”.
Dr Mastoureh Fathi (School of Law, Royal Holloway) - “Home, Pedagogy and Belonging: Exploring Afghan women’s 'extension of home' in London”.
Prof Ravinder Barn (School of Law, Royal Holloway) - “Unaccompanied migrant children in Sicily: caught between international and humanitarian ideals and nativist populism”.
Discussant: Dr Simon Behrman (School of Law, Royal Holloway) - “The EU as a ‘Hostile Environment’”.
Dr Caitlin Nunn (Department of Sociology, Durham University) - “Beyond integration: The (non)belongings of refugee-background young people”.
