M Griffiths
Biographic Data
| ID | 22956 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M Griffiths |
| GIVEN NAMES | M |
| FAMILY NAME | Griffiths |
| SIGNATURE | GRIFFITHS M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Birmingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3331-2196 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 610 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Where Now for Migration Studies? Problems, Purpose and Potential
The 21st century has witnessed an explosion of academic research on migration. We now have a rich corpus of projects and publications, as well as academic posts, degree programmes, PhDs, conferences, journals, departments and other (often well‐funded) ventures dedicated to migration. In parallel, however, ultra‐nationalism, militarised borders and anti‐immigrant rhetoric have escalated globally. Evidently, the explosion of scholarly interest in m…
A Migration Studies Manifesto
I am indebted to Ilse van Liempt, Jonathan Darling and Lauren Martin for such a considered engagement; it is good to be discussing the questions facing Migration Studies as it ‘matures’. As they describe, migration research is accused of becoming a ‘crisis industry’ documenting exclusion without the possibility for influence (Baldwin-Edwards et al. 2018; Rozakou 2019); and chasing a flawed, neoliberal ‘impact’ agenda that feeds policy demands for…
A ‘temporal turn’? Proposing time as method
The emotional governance of immigration controls
Emotions produce the borders between the self and other.They are also constitutive of national border practices and politics.This article considers the 'affective governance' of the UK's immigration system, arguing that an emotional register that is both splenetic and indifferent is evident across migration policy, decision-making, and operational practice.It draws on 15-years of research on immigration administration, detention, and judicial spa…
Unduly Harsh?”: An Empirical Examination of Best Interests Assessments in the Context of Parental Deportation
Thousands of people are deported from the UK every year, having served a sentence for a serious criminal offence, it being determined that it is no longer in the public interest for them to remain in the UK. For those who are parents, they can appeal against deportation on grounds that it would breach their right to family life and have an unduly harsh impact on their children. Detailed guidance has emerged, setting out the factors that should be…
Epilogue: Claiming Time' Special Issue
This paper offers an epilogue to a special edition of articles employing a temporal lens to examine the politics of European asylum and reception systems. From camps to courts to casework, the papers explore a range of temporal matters arising in relation to attempts to manage human mobility. In this epilogue, I identify three temporal themes that arise across the different papers and that are dominant in contemporary Euro-American migration gove…
Rethinking commonality in refugee status determination in Europe: Legal geographies of asylum appeals
The Common European Asylum System aims to establish common standards for refugee status determination among EU Member States. Combining insights from legal and political geography we bring the depth and scale of this challenge into sharp relief. Drawing on interviews and a detailed ethnography of asylum adjudication involving over 850 in-person asylum appeal observations, we point towards practical differences in the spatio-temporality, materiali…
The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control
In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants, this article argues that the hostile environment is a specific policy approach, and one with profound significance for the UK’s border practices. We trace the ‘hostile environment’ phrase, exposing its o…
The tribunal atmosphere: On qualitative barriers to access to justice
Vulnerable groups’ direct experiences and impressions of British courts and tribunals have often been overlooked by politicians and policy makers (JUSTICE, 2019). This paper takes a geographical, empirical approach to access to justice to respond to these concerns, paying attention to the atmosphere of First Tier Immigration and Asylum Tribunal hearings to explore the qualitative aspects of (in)access to justice during asylum appeals. It draws on…
Esports y ciencia: Sintonizando con el fenómeno de los deportes electrónicos (Esports and science: Tuning into the phenomenon of electronic sports)
The cultural changes suffered in the last decades have originated different emergent phenomena that have burst into our time. Electronic sports (esports) have been consolidated as one of them, giving rise to their study from multiple areas, especially from the sciences of physical-sports activity (leisure, performance, professionalization ...). Therefore, this work illustrates how the scientific-academic world is currently addressing this phenome…
What’s missing from legal geography and materialist studies of law? Absence and the assembling of asylum appeal hearings in Europe
There is an absence of absence in legal geography and materialist studies of the law. Drawing on a multi‐sited ethnography of European asylum appeal hearings, this paper illustrates the importance of absences for a fully‐fledged materiality of legal events. We show how absent materials impact hearings, that non‐attending participants profoundly influence them, and that even when participants are physically present, they are often simultaneously a…
‘My passport is just my way out of here’. Mixed-immigration status families, immigration enforcement and the citizenship implications
In a context of sustained political attempts to reduce immigration and increase expulsions from the UK, mixed-immigration status relationships between citizens and precarious foreign nationals have arisen as key sites where the boundaries of national belonging are contested. These families are presented as inherently problematic: complicating the citizen/migrant binary and supposedly pitting family life against national immigration objectives. Dr…
Seeking asylum and the politics of family
Gender identities and family roles and relationships have an important – but controversial and contested – place in the British asylum system. Drawing on the experience of a refused asylum seeker, who I call Martin, this article considers the various ways in which ‘family’ arose in the long course of his asylum claim: from the loss of his parents, to falling in love and creating new family ties in the UK. Through Martin’s narrative of his experie…
Foreign, criminal: A doubly damned modern British folk-devil
An association of strangers with danger and criminality is one of the most enduring social myths. However, in the UK, it was only after a media outcry 10 years ago over the release of foreign nationals from British prisons, that the ‘Foreign Criminal’ exploded into political and popular consciousness. Despite the small numbers of people involved, the location of this folk devil at the intersection of legal and moral assessments of ‘wickedness’ an…
Linguistic incomprehension in British asylum appeal hearings
For the thousands of appellants who navigate Britain's asylum appeal courts every year, attending a hearing conducted in a language they do not understand and participating via an interpreter, is usually viewed as a significant disadvantage. The findings of a study that entailed ethnographic and structured observations of over 390 asylum appeal hearings in England and Wales during 2013 and 2014, however, indicate that the presence of interpreters…
Internet Addiction in Psychotherapy
Current knowledge about effective internet addiction treatment is limited. This book explores how 20 international internet addiction therapy experts experience the presenting problem of internet addi
Here, Man Is Nothing: Gender and Policy in an Asylum Context
In policy terms, 'genuine' refugees are conceptualized as vulnerable, coerced victims, an image that does not reflect the realities of most male refugees and asylum seekers. Not only does the image conflict with dominant forms of masculinity, but as refused asylum seekers have their purported vulnerability rejected and honesty challenged as part of having their claim refused, there is an implicit conclusion that they are deceptive, opportunistic,…
Internet Addiction: A Systematic Review of Epidemiological Research for the Last Decade
Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees
Despite long-standing recognition that variations exist between people's experiences of time, and that time is central to the framing of social life and bureaucratic systems, migration scholars have tended to neglect the temporal dimension in their exploration of mobility. This continues to be the case today despite it being over a decade since Saulo Cwerner, in this journal, called for migration researchers to give greater attention to time. Thi…
Living with Uncertainty
Immigration detention is a central tenet of the British government’s response to immigration but remains under-theorised in academia. This article uses testimonies drawn from anthropological research conducted with detainees at an Immigration Removal Centre to examine lived experiences of immigration detention and explore the relationships between detainees and the British state. It suggests that despite being a space of extreme control (both in …
Anonymous Aliens? Questions of Identification in the Detention and Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers
Immigration detention and deportation are central tenets of the British government's immigration strategy. Although in theory immigration detainees face imminent deportation, in practice many obstacles frustrate removal, prolonging the limbo of detention. Drawing on two years' anthropological research with failed asylum seekers in one such Immigration Removal Centre, I argue that the concepts of identity and identification are useful in understan…
Vile liars and truth distorters’; Truth, trust and the asylum system (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Immigration detainees and failed asylum seekers constitute some of the most mistrusted persons in British society. There is some basis to this stereotype – many people do provide information they know to be untrue or request asylum when they have no valid claim under the Refugee Convention. One could of course challenge this picture by critiquing the definition of ‘lies’, identifying flawed bureaucratic assumptions about what information people c…
Sheltered housing in Britain – an approach to managing the housing needs of the elderly
The principal response by providers of public and social rented housing to the housing needs of elder people has been to provide “sheltered” housing. Has this emphasis on housing been the most appropriate housing management solution to the housing problems of older people? This paper presents a brief case study illustrating two categories of sheltered housing scheme
"A New Edition of Aeschylus' "Suppliants
Sickness absence after inguinal herniorrhaphy
Eight hundred and ninety-nine men were studied, aged 16-65 inclusive, who underwent an elective inguinal herniorrhaphy during 1970 and 1971 in eight hospitals in Wessex, and under nine consultant surgeons. There was a significant variation in postoperative inpatient stay and total sickness absence between hospitals and between consultants. The physical activity involved in the patient's occupation, his age at operation, previous sickness absence,…
Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees
Despite long-standing recognition that variations exist between people's experiences of time, and that time is central to the framing of social life and bureaucratic systems, migration scholars have tended to neglect the temporal dimension in their exploration of mobility. This continues to be the case today despite it being over a decade since Saulo Cwerner, in this journal, called for migration researchers to give greater attention to time. Thi…
Living with Uncertainty
Immigration detention is a central tenet of the British government’s response to immigration but remains under-theorised in academia. This article uses testimonies drawn from anthropological research conducted with detainees at an Immigration Removal Centre to examine lived experiences of immigration detention and explore the relationships between detainees and the British state. It suggests that despite being a space of extreme control (both in …
The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control
In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants, this article argues that the hostile environment is a specific policy approach, and one with profound significance for the UK’s border practices. We trace the ‘hostile environment’ phrase, exposing its o…
Here, Man Is Nothing: Gender and Policy in an Asylum Context
In policy terms, 'genuine' refugees are conceptualized as vulnerable, coerced victims, an image that does not reflect the realities of most male refugees and asylum seekers. Not only does the image conflict with dominant forms of masculinity, but as refused asylum seekers have their purported vulnerability rejected and honesty challenged as part of having their claim refused, there is an implicit conclusion that they are deceptive, opportunistic,…
Vile liars and truth distorters’; Truth, trust and the asylum system (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Immigration detainees and failed asylum seekers constitute some of the most mistrusted persons in British society. There is some basis to this stereotype – many people do provide information they know to be untrue or request asylum when they have no valid claim under the Refugee Convention. One could of course challenge this picture by critiquing the definition of ‘lies’, identifying flawed bureaucratic assumptions about what information people c…
What’s missing from legal geography and materialist studies of law? Absence and the assembling of asylum appeal hearings in Europe
There is an absence of absence in legal geography and materialist studies of the law. Drawing on a multi‐sited ethnography of European asylum appeal hearings, this paper illustrates the importance of absences for a fully‐fledged materiality of legal events. We show how absent materials impact hearings, that non‐attending participants profoundly influence them, and that even when participants are physically present, they are often simultaneously a…
Foreign, criminal: A doubly damned modern British folk-devil
An association of strangers with danger and criminality is one of the most enduring social myths. However, in the UK, it was only after a media outcry 10 years ago over the release of foreign nationals from British prisons, that the ‘Foreign Criminal’ exploded into political and popular consciousness. Despite the small numbers of people involved, the location of this folk devil at the intersection of legal and moral assessments of ‘wickedness’ an…
The tribunal atmosphere: On qualitative barriers to access to justice
Vulnerable groups’ direct experiences and impressions of British courts and tribunals have often been overlooked by politicians and policy makers (JUSTICE, 2019). This paper takes a geographical, empirical approach to access to justice to respond to these concerns, paying attention to the atmosphere of First Tier Immigration and Asylum Tribunal hearings to explore the qualitative aspects of (in)access to justice during asylum appeals. It draws on…
Anonymous Aliens? Questions of Identification in the Detention and Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers
Immigration detention and deportation are central tenets of the British government's immigration strategy. Although in theory immigration detainees face imminent deportation, in practice many obstacles frustrate removal, prolonging the limbo of detention. Drawing on two years' anthropological research with failed asylum seekers in one such Immigration Removal Centre, I argue that the concepts of identity and identification are useful in understan…
Epilogue: Claiming Time' Special Issue
This paper offers an epilogue to a special edition of articles employing a temporal lens to examine the politics of European asylum and reception systems. From camps to courts to casework, the papers explore a range of temporal matters arising in relation to attempts to manage human mobility. In this epilogue, I identify three temporal themes that arise across the different papers and that are dominant in contemporary Euro-American migration gove…
A ‘temporal turn’? Proposing time as method
Rethinking commonality in refugee status determination in Europe: Legal geographies of asylum appeals
The Common European Asylum System aims to establish common standards for refugee status determination among EU Member States. Combining insights from legal and political geography we bring the depth and scale of this challenge into sharp relief. Drawing on interviews and a detailed ethnography of asylum adjudication involving over 850 in-person asylum appeal observations, we point towards practical differences in the spatio-temporality, materiali…
Seeking asylum and the politics of family
Gender identities and family roles and relationships have an important – but controversial and contested – place in the British asylum system. Drawing on the experience of a refused asylum seeker, who I call Martin, this article considers the various ways in which ‘family’ arose in the long course of his asylum claim: from the loss of his parents, to falling in love and creating new family ties in the UK. Through Martin’s narrative of his experie…
Unduly Harsh?”: An Empirical Examination of Best Interests Assessments in the Context of Parental Deportation
Thousands of people are deported from the UK every year, having served a sentence for a serious criminal offence, it being determined that it is no longer in the public interest for them to remain in the UK. For those who are parents, they can appeal against deportation on grounds that it would breach their right to family life and have an unduly harsh impact on their children. Detailed guidance has emerged, setting out the factors that should be…
Linguistic incomprehension in British asylum appeal hearings
For the thousands of appellants who navigate Britain's asylum appeal courts every year, attending a hearing conducted in a language they do not understand and participating via an interpreter, is usually viewed as a significant disadvantage. The findings of a study that entailed ethnographic and structured observations of over 390 asylum appeal hearings in England and Wales during 2013 and 2014, however, indicate that the presence of interpreters…
A Geographical Study of Mortality in an Urban Area
A Geographical Study of Mortality in an Urban Area
Nutrition
Sickness absence after inguinal herniorrhaphy
Eight hundred and ninety-nine men were studied, aged 16-65 inclusive, who underwent an elective inguinal herniorrhaphy during 1970 and 1971 in eight hospitals in Wessex, and under nine consultant surgeons. There was a significant variation in postoperative inpatient stay and total sickness absence between hospitals and between consultants. The physical activity involved in the patient's occupation, his age at operation, previous sickness absence,…
"A New Edition of Aeschylus' "Suppliants
Sheltered housing in Britain – an approach to managing the housing needs of the elderly
The principal response by providers of public and social rented housing to the housing needs of elder people has been to provide “sheltered” housing. Has this emphasis on housing been the most appropriate housing management solution to the housing problems of older people? This paper presents a brief case study illustrating two categories of sheltered housing scheme
Anonymous Aliens? Questions of Identification in the Detention and Deportation of Failed Asylum Seekers
Immigration detention and deportation are central tenets of the British government's immigration strategy. Although in theory immigration detainees face imminent deportation, in practice many obstacles frustrate removal, prolonging the limbo of detention. Drawing on two years' anthropological research with failed asylum seekers in one such Immigration Removal Centre, I argue that the concepts of identity and identification are useful in understan…
Vile liars and truth distorters’; Truth, trust and the asylum system (Respond to this article at http: (Www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)
Immigration detainees and failed asylum seekers constitute some of the most mistrusted persons in British society. There is some basis to this stereotype – many people do provide information they know to be untrue or request asylum when they have no valid claim under the Refugee Convention. One could of course challenge this picture by critiquing the definition of ‘lies’, identifying flawed bureaucratic assumptions about what information people c…
Living with Uncertainty
Immigration detention is a central tenet of the British government’s response to immigration but remains under-theorised in academia. This article uses testimonies drawn from anthropological research conducted with detainees at an Immigration Removal Centre to examine lived experiences of immigration detention and explore the relationships between detainees and the British state. It suggests that despite being a space of extreme control (both in …
Internet Addiction: A Systematic Review of Epidemiological Research for the Last Decade
Out of Time: The Temporal Uncertainties of Refused Asylum Seekers and Immigration Detainees
Despite long-standing recognition that variations exist between people's experiences of time, and that time is central to the framing of social life and bureaucratic systems, migration scholars have tended to neglect the temporal dimension in their exploration of mobility. This continues to be the case today despite it being over a decade since Saulo Cwerner, in this journal, called for migration researchers to give greater attention to time. Thi…
Internet Addiction in Psychotherapy
Current knowledge about effective internet addiction treatment is limited. This book explores how 20 international internet addiction therapy experts experience the presenting problem of internet addi
Here, Man Is Nothing: Gender and Policy in an Asylum Context
In policy terms, 'genuine' refugees are conceptualized as vulnerable, coerced victims, an image that does not reflect the realities of most male refugees and asylum seekers. Not only does the image conflict with dominant forms of masculinity, but as refused asylum seekers have their purported vulnerability rejected and honesty challenged as part of having their claim refused, there is an implicit conclusion that they are deceptive, opportunistic,…
Linguistic incomprehension in British asylum appeal hearings
For the thousands of appellants who navigate Britain's asylum appeal courts every year, attending a hearing conducted in a language they do not understand and participating via an interpreter, is usually viewed as a significant disadvantage. The findings of a study that entailed ethnographic and structured observations of over 390 asylum appeal hearings in England and Wales during 2013 and 2014, however, indicate that the presence of interpreters…
Seeking asylum and the politics of family
Gender identities and family roles and relationships have an important – but controversial and contested – place in the British asylum system. Drawing on the experience of a refused asylum seeker, who I call Martin, this article considers the various ways in which ‘family’ arose in the long course of his asylum claim: from the loss of his parents, to falling in love and creating new family ties in the UK. Through Martin’s narrative of his experie…
Foreign, criminal: A doubly damned modern British folk-devil
An association of strangers with danger and criminality is one of the most enduring social myths. However, in the UK, it was only after a media outcry 10 years ago over the release of foreign nationals from British prisons, that the ‘Foreign Criminal’ exploded into political and popular consciousness. Despite the small numbers of people involved, the location of this folk devil at the intersection of legal and moral assessments of ‘wickedness’ an…
‘My passport is just my way out of here’. Mixed-immigration status families, immigration enforcement and the citizenship implications
In a context of sustained political attempts to reduce immigration and increase expulsions from the UK, mixed-immigration status relationships between citizens and precarious foreign nationals have arisen as key sites where the boundaries of national belonging are contested. These families are presented as inherently problematic: complicating the citizen/migrant binary and supposedly pitting family life against national immigration objectives. Dr…
Esports y ciencia: Sintonizando con el fenómeno de los deportes electrónicos (Esports and science: Tuning into the phenomenon of electronic sports)
The cultural changes suffered in the last decades have originated different emergent phenomena that have burst into our time. Electronic sports (esports) have been consolidated as one of them, giving rise to their study from multiple areas, especially from the sciences of physical-sports activity (leisure, performance, professionalization ...). Therefore, this work illustrates how the scientific-academic world is currently addressing this phenome…
What’s missing from legal geography and materialist studies of law? Absence and the assembling of asylum appeal hearings in Europe
There is an absence of absence in legal geography and materialist studies of the law. Drawing on a multi‐sited ethnography of European asylum appeal hearings, this paper illustrates the importance of absences for a fully‐fledged materiality of legal events. We show how absent materials impact hearings, that non‐attending participants profoundly influence them, and that even when participants are physically present, they are often simultaneously a…
The UK’s hostile environment: Deputising immigration control
In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a ‘really hostile environment’ for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants, this article argues that the hostile environment is a specific policy approach, and one with profound significance for the UK’s border practices. We trace the ‘hostile environment’ phrase, exposing its o…
The tribunal atmosphere: On qualitative barriers to access to justice
Vulnerable groups’ direct experiences and impressions of British courts and tribunals have often been overlooked by politicians and policy makers (JUSTICE, 2019). This paper takes a geographical, empirical approach to access to justice to respond to these concerns, paying attention to the atmosphere of First Tier Immigration and Asylum Tribunal hearings to explore the qualitative aspects of (in)access to justice during asylum appeals. It draws on…
Rethinking commonality in refugee status determination in Europe: Legal geographies of asylum appeals
The Common European Asylum System aims to establish common standards for refugee status determination among EU Member States. Combining insights from legal and political geography we bring the depth and scale of this challenge into sharp relief. Drawing on interviews and a detailed ethnography of asylum adjudication involving over 850 in-person asylum appeal observations, we point towards practical differences in the spatio-temporality, materiali…
The emotional governance of immigration controls
Emotions produce the borders between the self and other.They are also constitutive of national border practices and politics.This article considers the 'affective governance' of the UK's immigration system, arguing that an emotional register that is both splenetic and indifferent is evident across migration policy, decision-making, and operational practice.It draws on 15-years of research on immigration administration, detention, and judicial spa…
Unduly Harsh?”: An Empirical Examination of Best Interests Assessments in the Context of Parental Deportation
Thousands of people are deported from the UK every year, having served a sentence for a serious criminal offence, it being determined that it is no longer in the public interest for them to remain in the UK. For those who are parents, they can appeal against deportation on grounds that it would breach their right to family life and have an unduly harsh impact on their children. Detailed guidance has emerged, setting out the factors that should be…
Epilogue: Claiming Time' Special Issue
This paper offers an epilogue to a special edition of articles employing a temporal lens to examine the politics of European asylum and reception systems. From camps to courts to casework, the papers explore a range of temporal matters arising in relation to attempts to manage human mobility. In this epilogue, I identify three temporal themes that arise across the different papers and that are dominant in contemporary Euro-American migration gove…
Where Now for Migration Studies? Problems, Purpose and Potential
The 21st century has witnessed an explosion of academic research on migration. We now have a rich corpus of projects and publications, as well as academic posts, degree programmes, PhDs, conferences, journals, departments and other (often well‐funded) ventures dedicated to migration. In parallel, however, ultra‐nationalism, militarised borders and anti‐immigrant rhetoric have escalated globally. Evidently, the explosion of scholarly interest in m…
Law (17 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (17 works) · Political science (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Immigration (13 works) · Migration, Health and Trauma (12 works) · Criminology (10 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Politics (7 works)