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Vicki Squire

Professor of International Politics

Co-Convenor, Warwick Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration network - BREM 

Email: V.J.Squire@warwick.ac.uk

Twitter: @vidkowiaksquire

Tel: +44 (0)24761 51977

Room: E1.13, Social Sciences Building

Advice and Feedback Hours, Spring Term: Thursday 11.30-12.30, Friday 11.30-12.30 (teaching weeks only)

Profile

I joined PAIS in 2012, following my position as RCUK (Research Councils UK) Research Fellow at the Centre of Citizenship, Identities and Governance, Open University, UK. Prior to that, I was ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, UK. I completed my PhD and my MA studies as part of the Ideology and Discourse Analysis programme at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK, with a visiting studentship at Australian National University. I have also held visiting professor positions at Sapienza University, Italy, and at Soka University, Japan.

Research interests

My research cuts across the fields of migration, citizenship, humanitarian and border studies. I focus on the policies and practices through which migration is governed, the dynamics and consequences of humanitarian interventions in contexts of displacement, and the politics of migration and solidarity activism. I have undertaken this work in various contexts, including the US-Mexico border region, the Mediterranean and Balkans, Northern Europe and sub-Saharan Africa.

Much of my recent work has focused on border struggles in the Mediterranean context. During 2015-2019, I led a large-scale qualitative ESRC project with people making precarious journeys across the Mediterranean. This culminated in a co-authored book published with Manchester University Press in 2021: Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe's ‘Migrant Crisis. During 2015-2018 I also held a Leverhulme Fellowship examining solidarity activism in the Mediterranean. This research was published as a book with Cambridge University Press in 2020: Europe's Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity. I also have a new co-edited book with Palgrave Macmillan - Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away - as part of the British Academy project on Making Home Away (Lost and Found? A Digital Archive of Testimonies of Migration, Displacement and Resettlement - led by Dr Yasmine Shamma, University of Reading with Vicki Squire and Suzan Ilcan).

My most recent project, Data and Displacement: Assessing the Practical and Ethical Implications of Targeting Humanitarian Protection, commenced in October 2020. Funded by the AHRC, Data and Displacement is a collaborative project with colleagues from University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and University of Juba, South Sudan. The research addresses the practical and ethical questions that arise from the focus on data-driven humanitarian targeting, focusing on the experiences of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in north-eastern Nigeria and South Sudan. You can read the project report here.

I have published widely on the themes of asylum, sanctuary, migration, displacement, humanitarianism, border struggles and solidarity activism. I have also presented lectures by invitation across the world, including in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and the US, and held the role of Co-Editor of the flagship International Studies Association journal International Political Sociology from 2016-2021. Together with Professor Dallal Stevens and Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, I am Convenor of the Warwick BREM (Borders, Race, Ethnicity and Migration) Network.

Teaching and supervision

I contribute to a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules within PAIS, and have wide-ranging experience in teaching across Politics, International Studies and the social sciences more widely. I also have extensive experience of supervising PhD students, and welcome proposals on any of the above or related topics. Students supervised to completion include:

  • Dr Mauricio Palma-Gutiérrez, Performing Survival: Venzuelans' Migratory Journeys along the Andean Corridor (2023)
  • Dr Francesca Melhuish, “There is no status quo”: ‘Crisis’ and Nostalgia in the Vote Leave Campaign (2021)
  • Dr Shannon Mathieu, Gender, Intervention Policy, and Right to Protect (2019)
  • Dr António Ferraz De Oliveira, The Politics of Territory in Early Anarchist Thought (2018)
  • Dr Veit Schwab, Discursive Borders in EUrope (2018)
  • Dr Lorenzo Vianelli, Governing Asylum Seekers: Logistics, Differentiation and Failure in the European Union’s Reception Regime (2018)
  • Dr Helen Arfvidsson, On Burning Cars, Concrete and Citizenship (2014)
  • Dr Jennifer Bagelman, City of Sanctuary: A State of Deferral (2012)

Recent publications

My recent works include:

For a full list of my publications, please see my Publications page.

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News

Professor Squire's most recent article has been published open access with Citizenship Studies. "Global Citizenship in the Making? Generating an Inventory of Migratory Claims" can be read here.

On 5th April 2023 Professor Squire presented findings on BBC Radio 4 from her British Academy research into Syrian experiences of remaking home. You can catch up via the podcast (from 17.41 mins) here.

Professor Squire has published an article, co-authored with Dr Modesta Alozie is now available open access in Big Data and Society. You can read “Coloniality and Frictions: Data Driven Humanitarianism in North-Eastern Nigeria and South Sudan” here.

Professor Squire's new co-edited volume with Dr Yasmine Shamma, Professor Suzan Ilcan and Dr Helen Underhill was published in February 2023 - Migration, Culture and Identity: Making Home Away

The final report of the Data and Displacement project was published in September 2022. You can read it in full here.

Professor Squire has co-edited a themed issue of Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space on Bordering Practices. You can read the Introduction she co-authored here and her individual article here.

Professor Squire's report on Syrian experiences of re/making home in the UK can now be accessed online in English and Arabic. You can also view an online gallery of visual artwork related to the research themes here.

Reclaiming Migration: Voices from Europe's 'Migration Crisis' has now been published with Manchester University Press, co-authored by Professor Squire with Dr Nina Perkowski, Professor Dallal Stevens and Professor Nick Vaughan-Williams.

Professor Squire's research formed part of the Imperial War Museum London exhibition, Refugees: Forced to Flee, from September 2020-June 2021. This included an artwork by Indrė Šerpetytė and an animated audio installation 

The Data and Displacement website is now live! You can also follow the project on Twitter: @DataDisplaceme1

Professor Squire's book, Europe’s Migration Crisis: Border Deaths and Human Dignity, has been published with Cambridge University Press (2020). It shows how the ‘migration crisis’ reflects the breakdown of a modern European tradition of humanism, and unpacks a series of pro-migrant activist interventions to explore how these advance alternative horizons of solidarity and hope amidst the lived experiences of a lethal policy regime.

Professor Squire published two new journal articles in 2020: ‘Migration and the politics of “the human”: Confronting the privileged subjects of IR’ builds on the insights of anti-racist, indigenous and postcolonial scholarship to argue for appreciation of the silences and violences of contemporary migration politics. ‘Hidden geographies of the “Mediterranean migration crisis”’, in Environment and planning C, shows how migratory testimonies involve claims to justice in both anti-war and anti-colonial terms.

The Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat final report and online interactive map are available online via the project website

openDemocracy published important testimony from an unaccompanied minor in Sicily along with Professor Squire's reflections on his experiences

Books

CUP

exclusionary politics of asylum

contested politics of mobility