Mary Bosworth

There always seems to be money for cruelty, doesn’t there…

"Both attorneys and smugglers do not merely respond to inequality, they help reproduce it." Marielys Padua Soto reflects on the effect of different actors working across the global migration regime, and how they sustain it.

Read the new blog post here ⤵️
lnkd.in/eqs6aXid

This sounds fascinating, organised by @thesociologicalreview.org so if you are in Glasgow, please consider attending. It is free.

ICE Detention Facilities Statistics 229 Detention Centers State All States City e.g., Notes Zip Code e.g., 00000 Search facilities by name, location, or detention code... Search facilities by name, city, state, or detention location code.

We have updated detentionreports.com.

229 separate reports for 229 ICE detention facilities.

Was this written by a cat? Surely this plan would result in one immense animal?

If you're in Oxford please join us next Tuesday evening: www.law.ox.ac.uk/content/even...

Known for being a welfare state, Denmark has been increasingly using ‘penal power to regulate non-citizens’. This has created significant spillover effects on the country’s development aid for international migration. See the analysis: blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-crimi...

Why it's a bad idea for the UK to copy Denmark's asylum system Victoria Canning, who has spent more than 10 years researching refugee rights in Denmark, writes about the lessons that can be learned.

Our network member @vcanning.bsky.social on why the UK should not copy the Danish model:
"As the co-ordinator of a national support service for refugees in Denmark said about deportation centres: 'They are designed to make life as intolerable as possible, to persuade people to go back.”

Read more:

yeah that is what I thought. Ok thank you.

What happens to people who are already on ILR? does it make it harder for them to apply for citizenship or more important that they do so now?

Home Secretary announces major asylum and other changes in new policy paper: "Restoring Order and Control" - Free Movement Following a plethora of media briefings and coverage over the past few days, the Home Secretary has officially published her policy paper on "Restoring Order

This is an excellent summary of this week's UK asylum announcements from Free Movement. freemovement.org.uk/home-secreta...

Job Openings US Editor Verso Books is looking for an Editor to join the team in Verso’s New York office. This role will be responsible for acquiring and editing books for the Verso list, which covers a wide range ...

We're hiring an editor in our New York office!

Apply by December 1st, 2025

Defending Prison Journalism Project

People inside America’s crumbling prisons risk everything to speak out about horrific conditions inside. We’re leading the push to help expose the actors and systems responsible for the violence of mass incarceration endmassincarceration.org/defending-pr...

People seeking asylum in the UK deserve safety and dignity At Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we have been giving grants to organisations welcoming and supporting refugees in the UK for 30 years. Today we remain committed to migrant justice - to a society where migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum can all live in safety, in a place where their rights and dignity are protected. This week's statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy will take away support for people who are destitute, and the changes to family reunion and removal will have a disproportionate impact on women and children. Refugees have been living and thriving in communities across the UK for much longer than the 30 years Esmée has been supporting them. Migration is a vital part of UK life, and safe and legal routes should be a priority for those most in need of asylum and refuge in the UK. We will continue to support organisations working for this.

People seeking asylum in the UK deserve safety and dignity 🧡

Read our statement reiterating our support to organisations welcoming and supporting refugees in the UK. We also share responses from the sector about how the government's proposals on the asylum system will impact people.

Christopher Bertram | ‘Core Protection’ Refugeehood is not supposed to be like this. The ideal envisaged by the Refugee Convention is that refugee status should...

Me at the LRB blog on the atrocious refugee policy of Mahmood and Starmer

The Danish Social Democrats are currently on course for their worst election result since at least the Second World War, despite their brand of far-right accommodationism being touted as a blueprint for other centre-left parties.

Book Review: Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British

A lovely review of @mfbosworth.bsky.social's Supply Chain Justice: The Logistics of British Border Control blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/border-crimi... @princetonupress.bsky.social - thank you @bordercrim.bsky.social and @holly-bird.bsky.social!

Do any Oxford based people know how or whether our MPs have responded to today’s announcements by the Home Secretary? I can’t find anything

V useful analysis of some of the significant human rights problems raised by Mahmood’s announcement

Authors @kjerstilohne.bsky.social, Andreea Ioana Alecu, and Katrine Antonsen "map the intersections of humanitarian reason and penal governance in detail, focusing on forms of penality leaving Norway, Sweden and Denmark through development aid."

Read the new blog post here ⤵️
tinyurl.com/66ynhmyj

This week we are running a thematic series on penal exports in Scandinavia. Penal exports are models, money, personnel, institutions, laws, technologies, and epistemologies related to the complex of crime and justice.

Asylum system in UK ‘out of control’ and dividing country, home secretary says Shabana Mahmood to unveil new proposals modelled on Denmark’s controversial system

The Prime Minister said in September that we are at a fork in the road. These asylum proposals suggest we have taken the wrong turning.

The idea that recognised refugees need to be deported is wrong.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Plans to leave refugees in a state of perpetual uncertainty about where and if they can rebuild their lives are not just performative cruelty, they are counterproductive to integration and the economy. It doesn’t have to be like this - 1/2

A black cat glaring from her seat at a dining table

My cat would like a word

Dear [my MP’s name], As the Home Secretary prepares to announce sweeping changes to the UK’s asylum system, I see it as both my duty as a citizen and responsibility as a migration expert to do all I can to urge policymakers to oppose the proposals—not only for what they will do to refugees, though that is the first concern, but also for what they will mean for all of us and the future society we live in.  That is why I am writing to you as my MP. This letter explains why I consider the need to oppose the Home Secretary’s proposals urgent and, at the most fundamental level, in the national and your constituents’ interest. I was born in Germany, a country whose history taught me how quickly societies can go down dark paths; how quickly our leaders can fail in the choices they make. But the history of the displacement of people that the Nazi regime was responsible for also shaped my understanding of why refugee movements occur—and why our response to any of them can never compromise what are, and must always be, universal human rights. Which is why what is happening in the UK now is so deeply alarming. A manufactured crisis As of June 2025, there were 42.5 million refugees globally. Over 70% of them are hosted by low- and middle-income countries; most of them immediate neighbours. Overall, five countries—Colombia, Germany, Türkiye, Iran and Uganda—host a third of the total number of refugees; Germany is the main host in the EU, hosting 2.7 million. The UK hosts 548,000 refugees; that is 0.78% of the UK population. About 110,000 people are in receipt of asylum support; that is 0.15% of the UK population.

🌍 42.5m refugees
Over 70% of them are hosted by low- and middle-income countries.

🇬🇧 548k refugees
= 0.78% of the UK population.

It is not refugees who tear our country apart, it is the mainstreaming of far right policies. And that’s a risk to all of us.

My letter to my MP.

#asylum #Mahmood

🧵

I make jewelry as my attempt to relax and switch off. And today I just melted everything. Not on purpose. Hobbies are not always the answer folks. 😡

To explain briefly: at the moment people successful in their asylum claims get permission to stay in the UK for 5 years, then have to apply for permanent residency. At that point a review of their status is done, but it’s rare not to succeed at that point unless they‘ve committed an offence 1/

Nice to be reviewed on home turf in @bordercrim.bsky.social , am always very proud of how the organisation operates its different parts independently. Still rather worried about our financial situation and ability to continue

In May 2025, the UK Labour government published a new immigration white paper. Ananya Kumar-Banerjee discusses how it uses the spectre of illegal migrants to obscure the systematic exploitation of those on the move.

Read the full post here ⤵️
lnkd.in/eVTzY62M

And it is 📣📣📣 Proof stage! 🥳🤩
The book Detention and Deportation in Europe by @bupjournals.bsky.social
Product of collaboration with friends and colleagues Francesca Esposito and Annika Lindberg - and many other scholars, artists, poets, activists ✨🙏