Home - Migration, Boundaries and Identities

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Migration, Boundaries and Identities

Research within this group focuses on the social, cultural and political construction of place and nation; on relationships between migration, globalisation, transnationalism and conceptualisations of place at different scales (local, national, global); and on geographies of spatial exclusion and identity, particularly in relation to race, gender, childhood and cultural marginality.

The distinctive character of the group lies in developing new theoretical frameworks for understanding the implications of different types of boundaries - imagined, social and political - for the construction and experiences of particular groups in society and for policy formation. The group’s work is empirically rich, theoretically informed, and policy-relevant. Key areas of recent research include:

Understanding international migration patterns and processes associated with both forced migration and labour migration and 'mixed flows';
Developing new theoretical and analytical tools for understanding gender-specific and gender-related persecution and the feminization of international migration flows and the impact of male- and female-dominated migration streams on gender roles and relations;
Empirical research exploring the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, and the impacts of policies relating to asylum determination, legal representation, detention, welfare support, and social cohesion;
Important contributions to the development of evidence-based policy-making on migration at the national, European and global (UN) levels;
Cutting edge research on the spatial regulation of migration ('multi-level governance', 'bottom up' governance, rights-based approaches to the governance of migration);
Revitalizing academic interest in ‘back-to-the-land’ experimentation and consolidating extant work on low impact development and eco-villages;
Developing multi-dimensional understandings of both rurality, internal migration and counter-urbanisation;
Leading edge work on activism, participatory geographies and geographies of migrant rights and justice; and
Accomplished, historically sensitive work on the moral and cultural geographies of nationalism, particularly in relation to Wales.

Members of the group lead the University’s Centre for Migration Policy Research, which promotes interdisciplinary research and develops collaborative research partnerships nationally and internationally.

Academic staff

Professor Heaven Crawley (International migration, forced migration, refugees, asylum, gender, childhood, UK and European migration policy-making)

Dr Pyrs Gruffudd (Cultural geography and landscape, environmentalism)

Dr Eleanor Fisher (International development, social change in sub-Saharan Africa, livelihood issues, poverty and vulnerability, fair trade and public policy in Wales)

Dr Keith Halfacree (Rural issues, migration, cultural geography, environmentalism, social theory)

Dr Nicola Piper (International economic migration, migrant rights, governance of migration, political activism, transnational advocacy networks, global policy)