Emma Patchett

My article on asylum accommodation and the construction of the home in law & film just published in JPPEL - A cinematic jurisprudence of homemaking in his house (2020) url: www.emerald.com/jppel/articl...

Starmer v Starmer: why is the former human rights lawyer so cautious about defending human rights? The long read: Many of his supporters hoped the prime minister would restore the UK’s commitment to international law. Yet Labour’s record over the past year has been curiously mixed

Great article by @trillingual.bsky.social that highlights the way in which Starmer perhaps embodies the ambivalence of human rights law:the capacity for radical change on the basis of universal dignity vs a conservative reaffirmation of nation state neoliberalism www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

It says a lot about where we're going that the BBC is now running stories in which they ask lifeboat crews whether they will apologise for using their boats to save lives

An effigy of refugees, burned by a crowd: this is where Europe’s brutal fantasy of border control has led us | Maurice Stierl The shocking scene in Northern Ireland is the result of a decade spent militarising Europe’s fringes – and dismissing the human cost, says migration and border researcher Maurice Stierl

‘centrist parties amplify crisis talk, catering to simplistic and dangerous control fantasies, offering only more borders, as well as “border spectacles” – performative but nonetheless violent & racist acts of exclusion’ @mauricestierl.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The Utopia*Art*Politics Collection The concept of utopia has a dark colonial past that lives on through overgrown dreams that leave little space for other possible futures. The Utopia*Art*Politics Collection explores the alternative po...

“Rather than stay asleep alone amongst the colonial ruins of utopia, we invite you to dream radically together otherwise” @jochamb.bsky.social www.uu.nl/en/opinion/t...

Criminalise all elements of the genocide machine, sanction Israel, secondary sanctions on its trading partners.

The police (wrongly) inform a peaceful protestor that holding a Palestinian flag and signs deploring genocide is an offence under the Terrorism Act. This is the deranged policing environment the government has created.

When Britain's 'feminists' cheer for bombs and sneer at Palestinian suffering The UK's most prominent 'feminists' ignore women in Gaza under bombs and siege, but speak up to manufacture consent for western wars or attack the anti-war left

"Feminism must mean more than slogans for empire" @maryamaldossari.bsky.social www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/when...

I wrote about Trµmp's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, the trial of Mitsuye Endo, the example of Japanese American incarceration, pledging allegiance to war, the inherence of fascism, and my grandfather's Alien Enemy Wind-Up Doll™ @thebaffler.com: t.ly/n07l7

Frontex unlawfully shared thousands of people's personal data with Europol Under the banner of fighting migrant smuggling, Frontex has collected, and unlawfully siphoned to Europol, personal data for years—quietly drawing thousands of migrants, as well as EU citizens aiding ...

For years, human rights advocates have warned of the criminalisation of migrants & activists at Europe’s borders.
With @balkanizator.bsky.social & @lolahierro.bsky.social we shed light on the opaque role of Frontex and Europol in drawing thousands into this dragnet.
wearesolomon.com/mag/format/i...

Surreal is the right word.

Two completely indistinguishable positions on small boats from a Tory & a Labour MP on Newsnight yesterday.

Neither one of them capable of making a case that stands up to the slightest logical pushback. Pathetic.

"The #weaponisation and securitisation of #migration has a long history,” says Stierl, “the hybrid warfare narrative [...] is just the latest attempt to justify European deterrence efforts in places like #Libya, where the humanitarian situation is unimaginable for those stuck there.”

Italy: One dead, several missing as migrant boat sinks near Lampedusa A migrant boat capsized between Tunisia and Italy, leaving one dead and several missing, amid rising Mediterranean fatalities. Meanwhile, there are growing legal concerns over Italy’s contentious depo...

The Mediterranean continues to be a graveyard for people attempting to seek asylum in Europe.

🔊We must never accept such tragedies as normal. Let’s continue to advocate for EU migration and asylum policies that protect and support people in need.

YouTube video by Double Down News Sharing This Video Could Get You 14 Years in Prison

Today, the UK government intends to ban the non-violent protesters Palestine Action as a "terrorist" group, exposing anyone supporting them to terrorism charges. In 2 days, 380,000 people have watched this video on YT alone.
You're going to need a bigger prison.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECkV...

Legal Geographies of Water: The Spaces, Places and Narratives of Human-Water Relations This book deepens our understanding of humanity’s diverse relationships with water and the law, providing a critical assessment of this relationship, and charting the course towards a more sustainable...

It’s publication day of my new book, Legal Geographies of Water
The Spaces, Places and Narratives of Human-Water Relations.

Even better: it’s on sale!

Germany to stop funding migrant rescue ships in Mediterranean | The National Almost 750 people reported dead or missing after attempting perilous sea crossing so far this year

The German government will stop funding civilian sea rescue operations.

🔔Saving lives is not a favour. It's a moral and legal obligation.

Book Review: Immigration detention and social harm – The collateral impacts of migrant incarceration Michelle Peterie (ed) (2025). Immigration detention and social harm – The collateral impacts of migrant incarceration. Routledge. Reviewed by Emma Patchett, Northumbria Law School, Northumbria Univ…

My review of Immigration detention and social harm – The collateral impacts of migrant incarceration edited by @michpeterie.bsky.social for @carceralgeography.bsky.social carceralgeographies.co.uk/book-review-...

@drdconlon.bsky.social & @nancyhiemstra.bsky.social discuss their new book 'Immigration Detention Inc' @plutopress.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/0nkE...

Reflections on This is a book review, reflection and summary of Mary Bosworth's (Professor of Criminology at Border Criminologies) recently published book,

Read @aviddetention.bsky.social's review of @mfbosworth.bsky.social's Supply Chain Justice: "[I]t is people who are the 'product' — people who arrive or stay in the UK and are subject to detention, people who are sorted, managed, moved, and monetised."
www.aviddetention.org.uk/article/refl...

They’re planning on building a detention center for migrants in the middle of the fetid swamps of Florida.

If you think this is something new, the first internment camp they sent me and my family to in 1942 was a barbed wire prison called Rohwer. It was located in the swamps of Arkansas.

“Nobody is Protected” from Border Patrol: My Conversation with Reece Jones (Repost) Border Patrol is one of the most controversial yet misunderstood law enforcement agencies in the country. Fellow geographer Reece Jones unpacks this agency is his latest book.

“Mapping the Border Patrol’s history from its bigoted and violent Wild West beginnings through the legal precedents that have unleashed today’s militarized force” - ‘Nobody is Protected’: @reecejones.bsky.social in conversation with @austinkocher.com
open.substack.com/pub/austinko...

Great paper on narratives of liberation by political prisoners from the Maghreb region as collective forms of resistance by
@yosra999.bsky.social at ‘Narratives of Captivity’ symposium, convened by Tony Ward

Enjoyed hearing @stephemmabrown.bsky.social speak about narratives of liminal space & the shaping of national identity through carcerality, & Alessandra Calanchi discussing domestic entrapment and surveillance in Louisa May Alcott - ‘Narratives of Captivity’ @northumbriauni.bsky.social

V interesting presentation by @cgregoriou.bsky.social & @iaras22.bsky.social at yesterday’s ‘Narratives of Captivity’ conference @northumbriauni.bsky.social on narratives of human trafficking in Peter Robinson’s crime fiction, exploring the framing of agency and exploitation in the novel

The Politics of Vision, Targeting, and Palestine ‘The whole history of Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.’ Edward Said On the evening of March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King, a

“Technologies of vision entangled with state violence often involve and provoke another politics of vision, that is, politics of witnessing and evidencing” - Amin Parsa criticallegalthinking.com/2025/06/09/t...

YouTube video by Netflix Grenfell: Uncovered | Official Trailer | Netflix

youtu.be/33r17KyIhN8?... #GrenfellUncovered (dir. Olaide Sadiq)

Law, Racial Justice, Black-Centred Sci-Fi & Imagining an Antiracist Future Does the end of structural racism mean an end to the world as we know it?

Here is my argument for why science fiction should be an integral part of legal education. Among other things, I argue that it is useful for understanding the meanings made by legal history and so aids law's speculative imagining of the end of racial injustice.

folukeafrica.com/law-racial-j...

Working on #migrationlaw, #bordercriminologies , #bordercontrol, #asylum policies in law and film/literature? Do consider submitting an abstract for the Border Crossings and the Law stream at the Critical Legal Conference, 4-6th September 2025 #ExeterCLC sites.exeter.ac.uk/clc2025/call...

Methodological Challenges in Researching Violence in Detention

New on the blog!

What does it mean to research violence in spaces designed to conceal it? In a powerful new post, @andrianifili.bsky.social reflects on the ethics, limits, and emotional labour of fieldwork in Greek detention centres.