Maria Hagan
Biographic Data
| ID | 1005634 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Maria Hagan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Maria |
| FAMILY NAME | Hagan |
| SIGNATURE | HAGAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4708-8110 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Border deathwork
Numbers of people on the move dying while trying to cross the France-UK border dramatically increased in 2024. These are violent deaths, around which procedures of identification and release of the bodies to the bereaved have been tightened. However, no state provisions exist to support the bereaved through these procedures, and they are often met with institutional indifference. Engaging with scholarship in critical border and death studies, thi…
Tearing the Land From Underfoot
Much attention has been devoted to the infliction of hostile environments on people on the move in political and discursive terms. However, less attention has been paid to the cultivation of physically hostile environments where they dwell. Building on critical border and environmental justice studies, this article examines how the natural environment is used and altered by state authorities at the northern French border to try and render it unli…
Insidious Harassment
Amidst well‐documented hostile migration policies, this article explores how logics of criminalisation seep into the lives of activists and citizens, providing assistance, relief, advocacy, and other forms of support to migrant people. As presences considered legal and legitimate, solidarity actors inhabit distinct subjectivities from those of people migrating informally, yet state authorities interpret their acts as problematic and subject them …
Migration, race, and gender
The policing of racialised migrant people in Morocco and across the Maghreb has been violent since the 1990s. The intimidation of those who support migrant people and seek to denounce human rights abuses against them has become an important dimension of border control. This article investigates the policing of “subversive solidarity actors”: human rights defenders and activists who publicly or covertly engage in a critical stance on migration con…
Under one roof
Calais has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since it emerged as a key European migration pressure point in the early 1990s. Yet in-depth discussions relating to the experiences of displaced women at this border remain rare. This article draws on my unexpected experience of spending 3 months in lockdown with border-crossing women in Calais when the field research I had been carrying out with (predominantly male) people living in makesh…
They tell us to keep our distance, but we sleep five people in one tent
When COVID-19 hit France, over 1,000 migrant people were living in insalubrious encampments in the northern city of Calais. A national lockdown was declared in March 2020, and in the face of the health risks the virus posed, it seemed the ongoing struggle between police and displaced people at this border might come to a halt. This article however argues that rather than appeasing tensions, the state leveraged the exceptional mobility regimes the…
Precarious encampments in hostile border zones
In migration studies, the space of the camp is most often understood as a fixed, humanitarian or institutional space of containment. In recent years, however, hardened border control strategies have given rise to contingent and precarious forms of encampment that stretch the scope of what we might understand as camp spaces. This paper is a methodological intervention on the study of “contingent camps”: encampments that are not fixed but dynamic a…
Dispersal and dispossession as bordering
Dispersal has acquired an increasingly central role within state-led border control strategies in Europe and North Africa. Scholars have, however, tended to apprehend dispersal in its geographical dimension, failing to interrogate bordering beyond spatial distancing from the territorial edges of the state. Furthermore, dispersal strategies in non-European countries are underexplored. We start filling these gaps by examining how dispersal operates…
The Contingent Camp
Reconsidering humanitarian advocacy through pressure points of the European ‘migration crisis’
This paper contributes to discussions on humanitarian advocacy. The European migration regime as constituted by the Dublin regulation, the EU‐Turkey deal and border deals with Libya among others, contributes to generating migration pressure points where migrants find themselves stuck and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Assistance and protection at these sites, inasmuch as they are available, are provided by a makeshift humanitarian …
Dispersal and dispossession as bordering
Dispersal has acquired an increasingly central role within state-led border control strategies in Europe and North Africa. Scholars have, however, tended to apprehend dispersal in its geographical dimension, failing to interrogate bordering beyond spatial distancing from the territorial edges of the state. Furthermore, dispersal strategies in non-European countries are underexplored. We start filling these gaps by examining how dispersal operates…
Precarious encampments in hostile border zones
In migration studies, the space of the camp is most often understood as a fixed, humanitarian or institutional space of containment. In recent years, however, hardened border control strategies have given rise to contingent and precarious forms of encampment that stretch the scope of what we might understand as camp spaces. This paper is a methodological intervention on the study of “contingent camps”: encampments that are not fixed but dynamic a…
They tell us to keep our distance, but we sleep five people in one tent
When COVID-19 hit France, over 1,000 migrant people were living in insalubrious encampments in the northern city of Calais. A national lockdown was declared in March 2020, and in the face of the health risks the virus posed, it seemed the ongoing struggle between police and displaced people at this border might come to a halt. This article however argues that rather than appeasing tensions, the state leveraged the exceptional mobility regimes the…
Reconsidering humanitarian advocacy through pressure points of the European ‘migration crisis’
This paper contributes to discussions on humanitarian advocacy. The European migration regime as constituted by the Dublin regulation, the EU‐Turkey deal and border deals with Libya among others, contributes to generating migration pressure points where migrants find themselves stuck and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Assistance and protection at these sites, inasmuch as they are available, are provided by a makeshift humanitarian …
Insidious Harassment
Amidst well‐documented hostile migration policies, this article explores how logics of criminalisation seep into the lives of activists and citizens, providing assistance, relief, advocacy, and other forms of support to migrant people. As presences considered legal and legitimate, solidarity actors inhabit distinct subjectivities from those of people migrating informally, yet state authorities interpret their acts as problematic and subject them …
Under one roof
Calais has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since it emerged as a key European migration pressure point in the early 1990s. Yet in-depth discussions relating to the experiences of displaced women at this border remain rare. This article draws on my unexpected experience of spending 3 months in lockdown with border-crossing women in Calais when the field research I had been carrying out with (predominantly male) people living in makesh…
The Contingent Camp
Reconsidering humanitarian advocacy through pressure points of the European ‘migration crisis’
This paper contributes to discussions on humanitarian advocacy. The European migration regime as constituted by the Dublin regulation, the EU‐Turkey deal and border deals with Libya among others, contributes to generating migration pressure points where migrants find themselves stuck and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance. Assistance and protection at these sites, inasmuch as they are available, are provided by a makeshift humanitarian …
Dispersal and dispossession as bordering
Dispersal has acquired an increasingly central role within state-led border control strategies in Europe and North Africa. Scholars have, however, tended to apprehend dispersal in its geographical dimension, failing to interrogate bordering beyond spatial distancing from the territorial edges of the state. Furthermore, dispersal strategies in non-European countries are underexplored. We start filling these gaps by examining how dispersal operates…
Precarious encampments in hostile border zones
In migration studies, the space of the camp is most often understood as a fixed, humanitarian or institutional space of containment. In recent years, however, hardened border control strategies have given rise to contingent and precarious forms of encampment that stretch the scope of what we might understand as camp spaces. This paper is a methodological intervention on the study of “contingent camps”: encampments that are not fixed but dynamic a…
Migration, race, and gender
The policing of racialised migrant people in Morocco and across the Maghreb has been violent since the 1990s. The intimidation of those who support migrant people and seek to denounce human rights abuses against them has become an important dimension of border control. This article investigates the policing of “subversive solidarity actors”: human rights defenders and activists who publicly or covertly engage in a critical stance on migration con…
Under one roof
Calais has attracted the attention of numerous scholars since it emerged as a key European migration pressure point in the early 1990s. Yet in-depth discussions relating to the experiences of displaced women at this border remain rare. This article draws on my unexpected experience of spending 3 months in lockdown with border-crossing women in Calais when the field research I had been carrying out with (predominantly male) people living in makesh…
They tell us to keep our distance, but we sleep five people in one tent
When COVID-19 hit France, over 1,000 migrant people were living in insalubrious encampments in the northern city of Calais. A national lockdown was declared in March 2020, and in the face of the health risks the virus posed, it seemed the ongoing struggle between police and displaced people at this border might come to a halt. This article however argues that rather than appeasing tensions, the state leveraged the exceptional mobility regimes the…
Insidious Harassment
Amidst well‐documented hostile migration policies, this article explores how logics of criminalisation seep into the lives of activists and citizens, providing assistance, relief, advocacy, and other forms of support to migrant people. As presences considered legal and legitimate, solidarity actors inhabit distinct subjectivities from those of people migrating informally, yet state authorities interpret their acts as problematic and subject them …
Border deathwork
Numbers of people on the move dying while trying to cross the France-UK border dramatically increased in 2024. These are violent deaths, around which procedures of identification and release of the bodies to the bereaved have been tightened. However, no state provisions exist to support the bereaved through these procedures, and they are often met with institutional indifference. Engaging with scholarship in critical border and death studies, thi…
Tearing the Land From Underfoot
Much attention has been devoted to the infliction of hostile environments on people on the move in political and discursive terms. However, less attention has been paid to the cultivation of physically hostile environments where they dwell. Building on critical border and environmental justice studies, this article examines how the natural environment is used and altered by state authorities at the northern French border to try and render it unli…
Migration, Refugees, and Integration (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Politics (5 works) · Calais (4 works) · Ethnography (4 works) · Migration and Exile Studies (4 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (4 works)