Ċetta Mainwaring
Biographic Data
| ID | 3759705 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ċetta Mainwaring |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ċetta |
| FAMILY NAME | Mainwaring |
| SIGNATURE | MAINWARING Ċ |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8264-2765 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 250 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The carceral web: Transnational economies of immigration detention
This article maps and analyses the imbricated forms of corporate and state power that forms the basis of expanding detention regimes in the US, the UK and Australia, countries that have the largest and most privatised detention estates in the world. We propose theorising these relationships as a carceral web that entraps people, spaces, and communities. We argue that the web is transnational, sticky and elastic, made possible by the alliance betw…
Slow and spectacular violence: Debilitation and onward mobility at the EU’s borders
From pushbacks to shipwrecks, spectacular forms of state violence at the EU’s borders are well documented. In this article, we trace a continuum of racialised violence that exists between these spectacular instances of state border controls, as well as more mundane practices that discourage arrival, integration and settlement. Following Rob Nixon, we conceptualise these latter practices as a slow violence that precludes finding a ‘liveable life’,…
Walls and Cages
The Trump administration’s rapid expansion of immigration controls across the United States is often cast as exceptional. Taking a historical, transnational view reveals that this rising authoritarianism is intimately tied to the proliferation of walls and cages across Western states over a number of decades. Sustained efforts by politicians across the ideological spectrum to detain, deport, and criminalize migrants have reshaped societies, under…
Islands of Solidarity? Migration and Activism in Malta
How does geography shape possibilities for migration-related activism and advocacy? In this article, we investigate this question through a case study of the Maltese Islands. Though located on the edge of the European Union, Malta has long considered itself at the centre of a ‘migration crisis’ in the Mediterranean. Maltese politicians have denounced what they perceive as a lack of solidarity from ‘EUrope’ and argued that they carry a disproporti…
Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescued over 110,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2017. From 2017, EU member states and agencies increasingly criminalized these organizations, accusing them of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy, Malta and the EU increased cooperation with Libya to stop people from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This article expl…
Subversive Knowledge in Times of Global Political Crisis: A Manifesto for Ethnography in the Study of International Relations
This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using ethnographic methods to analyze global politics in turbulent times. Ethnography has not gone unnoticed by international relations (IR) scholars, but the method remains at the fringes of the discipline. While acknowledging more recent feminist and practice theorist contributions to ethnographic research in IR, this paper brings together contemporary research across diverse issue areas, ranging…
Migrant Solidarity Work in Times of ‘Crisis’: Glasgow and the Politics of Place
Since 2015, new forms of migrant solidarity work emerged in Glasgow, spurred in part by refugee flows into Europe. Yet, for many organisations, much of their work has not changed since 2000, when the government began dispersing asylum seekers around the UK. Using histories and memories of place as an analytical lens, we examine solidarity work since the 2015 ‘crisis’ as well as over the longer term. In our analysis, the ‘crisis’ is not a critical…
Transgressive Solidarity: From Europe’s Cities to the Mediterranean Sea
In the wake of increasing migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, non-governmental organizations took to the seas to conduct search and rescue operations in 2014. In 2016, this humanitarian fleet rescued 50,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea. In the meantime, local solidarity initiatives emerged across Europe, motivated by the arrival of many people in their cities and by deaths and border spectacles in the Mediterranean. Juxtaposing solida…
At Europe's Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is now the deadliest region in the world for migrants. Although the death toll has been rising for many years, the EU response remains fragmented and short sighted. Politicians frame these migration flows as an unprecedented crisis and emphasize migration control at the EU’s external boundaries. In this context, At Europe’s Edge investigates (1) why the EU prioritizes the fortification of its external borders; (2) why migran…
Immigration detention: An Anglo model
Over the last twenty-five years, immigration detention policies and practices have proliferated around the globe. We look at four liberal democratic countries with the largest immigration detention systems—Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and identify components of an immigration detention policy ‘package’ as well as historical parallels in the early adoption of detention in these countries. This ‘Anglo model’ of deten…
Governing Migration from the Margins
No abstract available
Migrant agency: Negotiating borders and migration controls
Policy, media, activist and academic discourses often portray migrants and refugees in the extreme, as victims or villains. This portrayal obscures the agency demonstrated by migrants and refugees and evidenced in their own accounts of their journeys. It also reifies the power of the state to ‘secure’ borders and control migration, and conceals the contested politics of mobility and security visible in negotiations between migrants, borders guard…
Beyond the Border: Clandestine Migration Journeys
No abstract available
Matryoshka Journeys: Im/mobility During Migration
Acts of mobility require corresponding acts of immobility (or suspended mobility). Migrant journeys are not only about movement. Indeed, in the present policy context, this is ever more true. Whether a migrant is contained within a hidden compartment, detained by migration authorities, waiting for remittances to continue, or marooned within a drifting boat at sea, these moments of immobility have become an inherent part of migrant journeys especi…
Detention-as-Spectacle
Using a combination of migration studies, political sociology, and policy studies, this paper explores the contradictions and violence of immigration detention, its architectures, and its audiences. The concept of “detention-as-spectacle” is developed to make sense of detention’s hypervisible and obscured manifestations in the European Union. We focus particularly on two case studies, the United Kingdom and Malta, which occupy different geopoliti…
Small States and Nonmaterial Power: Creating Crises and Shaping Migration Policies in Malta, Cyprus, and the European Union
This article examines how the power relationships between Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, shape irregular immigration policies in these two sovereign outpost island states in the Mediterranean. As member states on the EU's southern periphery, Malta and Cyprus have faced new institutional structures since their accession in 2004 within which they now construct their migration policies. Here,…
Constructing a Crisis: The Role of Immigration Detention in Malta
Malta remains the only country in the European Union that maintains an 18‐month, mandatory detention policy for all irregular migrants upon arrival. This paper examines the role that detention has played in the Maltese government's response to the flows of irregular immigration to the island in the 21st century. It argues that detention is symbolic of the crisis narrative that the Maltese government has constructed as a response to these immigrat…
Resisting Distalization? Malta and Cyprus' influence on EU Migration and Asylum Policies
This article examines the role that Malta and the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) have played within the European Union in developing regional responses to irregular migration since 2004. It briefly compares their responses to those of other, larger southern Member States and traces the instances where Malta and the RoC have attempted to influence European migration and asylum policies, with varying degrees of success. It looks particularly at attempts …
Migrant agency: Negotiating borders and migration controls
Policy, media, activist and academic discourses often portray migrants and refugees in the extreme, as victims or villains. This portrayal obscures the agency demonstrated by migrants and refugees and evidenced in their own accounts of their journeys. It also reifies the power of the state to ‘secure’ borders and control migration, and conceals the contested politics of mobility and security visible in negotiations between migrants, borders guard…
Beyond the Border: Clandestine Migration Journeys
No abstract available
Matryoshka Journeys: Im/mobility During Migration
Acts of mobility require corresponding acts of immobility (or suspended mobility). Migrant journeys are not only about movement. Indeed, in the present policy context, this is ever more true. Whether a migrant is contained within a hidden compartment, detained by migration authorities, waiting for remittances to continue, or marooned within a drifting boat at sea, these moments of immobility have become an inherent part of migrant journeys especi…
Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescued over 110,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2017. From 2017, EU member states and agencies increasingly criminalized these organizations, accusing them of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy, Malta and the EU increased cooperation with Libya to stop people from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This article expl…
Constructing a Crisis: The Role of Immigration Detention in Malta
Malta remains the only country in the European Union that maintains an 18‐month, mandatory detention policy for all irregular migrants upon arrival. This paper examines the role that detention has played in the Maltese government's response to the flows of irregular immigration to the island in the 21st century. It argues that detention is symbolic of the crisis narrative that the Maltese government has constructed as a response to these immigrat…
Resisting Distalization? Malta and Cyprus' influence on EU Migration and Asylum Policies
This article examines the role that Malta and the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) have played within the European Union in developing regional responses to irregular migration since 2004. It briefly compares their responses to those of other, larger southern Member States and traces the instances where Malta and the RoC have attempted to influence European migration and asylum policies, with varying degrees of success. It looks particularly at attempts …
Transgressive Solidarity: From Europe’s Cities to the Mediterranean Sea
In the wake of increasing migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, non-governmental organizations took to the seas to conduct search and rescue operations in 2014. In 2016, this humanitarian fleet rescued 50,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea. In the meantime, local solidarity initiatives emerged across Europe, motivated by the arrival of many people in their cities and by deaths and border spectacles in the Mediterranean. Juxtaposing solida…
Small States and Nonmaterial Power: Creating Crises and Shaping Migration Policies in Malta, Cyprus, and the European Union
This article examines how the power relationships between Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, shape irregular immigration policies in these two sovereign outpost island states in the Mediterranean. As member states on the EU's southern periphery, Malta and Cyprus have faced new institutional structures since their accession in 2004 within which they now construct their migration policies. Here,…
Governing Migration from the Margins
No abstract available
Detention-as-Spectacle
Using a combination of migration studies, political sociology, and policy studies, this paper explores the contradictions and violence of immigration detention, its architectures, and its audiences. The concept of “detention-as-spectacle” is developed to make sense of detention’s hypervisible and obscured manifestations in the European Union. We focus particularly on two case studies, the United Kingdom and Malta, which occupy different geopoliti…
Subversive Knowledge in Times of Global Political Crisis: A Manifesto for Ethnography in the Study of International Relations
This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using ethnographic methods to analyze global politics in turbulent times. Ethnography has not gone unnoticed by international relations (IR) scholars, but the method remains at the fringes of the discipline. While acknowledging more recent feminist and practice theorist contributions to ethnographic research in IR, this paper brings together contemporary research across diverse issue areas, ranging…
Constructing a Crisis: The Role of Immigration Detention in Malta
Malta remains the only country in the European Union that maintains an 18‐month, mandatory detention policy for all irregular migrants upon arrival. This paper examines the role that detention has played in the Maltese government's response to the flows of irregular immigration to the island in the 21st century. It argues that detention is symbolic of the crisis narrative that the Maltese government has constructed as a response to these immigrat…
Resisting Distalization? Malta and Cyprus' influence on EU Migration and Asylum Policies
This article examines the role that Malta and the Republic of Cyprus (RoC) have played within the European Union in developing regional responses to irregular migration since 2004. It briefly compares their responses to those of other, larger southern Member States and traces the instances where Malta and the RoC have attempted to influence European migration and asylum policies, with varying degrees of success. It looks particularly at attempts …
Small States and Nonmaterial Power: Creating Crises and Shaping Migration Policies in Malta, Cyprus, and the European Union
This article examines how the power relationships between Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, on the one hand, and the European Union, on the other, shape irregular immigration policies in these two sovereign outpost island states in the Mediterranean. As member states on the EU's southern periphery, Malta and Cyprus have faced new institutional structures since their accession in 2004 within which they now construct their migration policies. Here,…
Migrant agency: Negotiating borders and migration controls
Policy, media, activist and academic discourses often portray migrants and refugees in the extreme, as victims or villains. This portrayal obscures the agency demonstrated by migrants and refugees and evidenced in their own accounts of their journeys. It also reifies the power of the state to ‘secure’ borders and control migration, and conceals the contested politics of mobility and security visible in negotiations between migrants, borders guard…
Beyond the Border: Clandestine Migration Journeys
No abstract available
Matryoshka Journeys: Im/mobility During Migration
Acts of mobility require corresponding acts of immobility (or suspended mobility). Migrant journeys are not only about movement. Indeed, in the present policy context, this is ever more true. Whether a migrant is contained within a hidden compartment, detained by migration authorities, waiting for remittances to continue, or marooned within a drifting boat at sea, these moments of immobility have become an inherent part of migrant journeys especi…
Detention-as-Spectacle
Using a combination of migration studies, political sociology, and policy studies, this paper explores the contradictions and violence of immigration detention, its architectures, and its audiences. The concept of “detention-as-spectacle” is developed to make sense of detention’s hypervisible and obscured manifestations in the European Union. We focus particularly on two case studies, the United Kingdom and Malta, which occupy different geopoliti…
Immigration detention: An Anglo model
Over the last twenty-five years, immigration detention policies and practices have proliferated around the globe. We look at four liberal democratic countries with the largest immigration detention systems—Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and identify components of an immigration detention policy ‘package’ as well as historical parallels in the early adoption of detention in these countries. This ‘Anglo model’ of deten…
Governing Migration from the Margins
No abstract available
At Europe's Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is now the deadliest region in the world for migrants. Although the death toll has been rising for many years, the EU response remains fragmented and short sighted. Politicians frame these migration flows as an unprecedented crisis and emphasize migration control at the EU’s external boundaries. In this context, At Europe’s Edge investigates (1) why the EU prioritizes the fortification of its external borders; (2) why migran…
Migrant Solidarity Work in Times of ‘Crisis’: Glasgow and the Politics of Place
Since 2015, new forms of migrant solidarity work emerged in Glasgow, spurred in part by refugee flows into Europe. Yet, for many organisations, much of their work has not changed since 2000, when the government began dispersing asylum seekers around the UK. Using histories and memories of place as an analytical lens, we examine solidarity work since the 2015 ‘crisis’ as well as over the longer term. In our analysis, the ‘crisis’ is not a critical…
Transgressive Solidarity: From Europe’s Cities to the Mediterranean Sea
In the wake of increasing migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, non-governmental organizations took to the seas to conduct search and rescue operations in 2014. In 2016, this humanitarian fleet rescued 50,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea. In the meantime, local solidarity initiatives emerged across Europe, motivated by the arrival of many people in their cities and by deaths and border spectacles in the Mediterranean. Juxtaposing solida…
Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea
Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescued over 110,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2017. From 2017, EU member states and agencies increasingly criminalized these organizations, accusing them of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy, Malta and the EU increased cooperation with Libya to stop people from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This article expl…
Subversive Knowledge in Times of Global Political Crisis: A Manifesto for Ethnography in the Study of International Relations
This paper explores the promises and pitfalls of using ethnographic methods to analyze global politics in turbulent times. Ethnography has not gone unnoticed by international relations (IR) scholars, but the method remains at the fringes of the discipline. While acknowledging more recent feminist and practice theorist contributions to ethnographic research in IR, this paper brings together contemporary research across diverse issue areas, ranging…
Walls and Cages
The Trump administration’s rapid expansion of immigration controls across the United States is often cast as exceptional. Taking a historical, transnational view reveals that this rising authoritarianism is intimately tied to the proliferation of walls and cages across Western states over a number of decades. Sustained efforts by politicians across the ideological spectrum to detain, deport, and criminalize migrants have reshaped societies, under…
Islands of Solidarity? Migration and Activism in Malta
How does geography shape possibilities for migration-related activism and advocacy? In this article, we investigate this question through a case study of the Maltese Islands. Though located on the edge of the European Union, Malta has long considered itself at the centre of a ‘migration crisis’ in the Mediterranean. Maltese politicians have denounced what they perceive as a lack of solidarity from ‘EUrope’ and argued that they carry a disproporti…
The carceral web: Transnational economies of immigration detention
This article maps and analyses the imbricated forms of corporate and state power that forms the basis of expanding detention regimes in the US, the UK and Australia, countries that have the largest and most privatised detention estates in the world. We propose theorising these relationships as a carceral web that entraps people, spaces, and communities. We argue that the web is transnational, sticky and elastic, made possible by the alliance betw…
Slow and spectacular violence: Debilitation and onward mobility at the EU’s borders
From pushbacks to shipwrecks, spectacular forms of state violence at the EU’s borders are well documented. In this article, we trace a continuum of racialised violence that exists between these spectacular instances of state border controls, as well as more mundane practices that discourage arrival, integration and settlement. Following Rob Nixon, we conceptualise these latter practices as a slow violence that precludes finding a ‘liveable life’,…
Migration, Refugees, and Integration (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Politics (9 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Geography (7 works) · Irregular migration (7 works) · Economic geography (6 works)