Who do we think we are?

In the time of MAGA, as nightmares rapidly become reality for many living in the USA, it can be hard to keep up with the pace of change. Here, we take stock of the latest news - including the move to cap refugee numbers at a record low, the further rollback of Temporary Protected Status for many vulnerable groups, and Trump's threat to cut funding to New York City under new mayor Zohran Mamdani. We consider these developments in light of our conversations this series with Heba Gowayed, Cecilia Menjívar, Ernesto Castañeda and Rachel Humphris, and reflect on why it's important to see the present moment as both exceptional but situated in a longer history of racialised politics stretching beyond the borders of the USA alone. We also ask how MAGA rhetoric and policy is making waves beyond the USA itself - including in the UK, where not only is Reform on the rise but the Labour Party is tightening asylum laws, and academics are concerned about the state of academic freedom. Plus: how racism at the "top" filters down to shape what sociologists speak of as the "structure of feeling" - and why we need to "demigrantise" migration research, to see how discourse and policy affects all of our lives.

**Recorded November 2025**

What's the link between free speech, bordering, and the 'MAGA' project of Donald Trump and his backers? And how does free speech as enshrined in the US constitution, contrast with what's happening on the ground in the USA? Sociologist Heba Gowayed, author of 'Refuge', Carnegie fellow, and voice against the arrest of students protesting genocide in Palestine, joins us. She tells us what role the arrest of pro-Palestinian activists has played in the MAGA project - and how, while whiteness has long been privileged in legislation in the USA, going right back to the 1790 Naturalisation Act, we must remain alert to the extremity of now. Ours is a time, says Heba, in which we are seeing an "explicit and express commitment to mass deportation", and a spectacle of cruelty that marks a departure from before. Plus: Heba describes her current project 'The Cost of Borders' and reflects on the status of academic freedom in the USA. Academic institutions, she suggests, are "targets for authoritarians" precisely because of their potential as sites of free speech. We must defend them.

**Recorded early Oct 2025**

What does it actually mean to be "documented" or "undocumented" as a migrant to the USA? What's the lived reality like of existing somewhere in between the two, including under the category of "temporary protected status", or TPS, created by Congress in 1990 for people from countries deemed too unsafe to return to? UCLA sociologist and leading migration expert Cecilia Menjívar joins us to discuss her concept of "liminal legality". Elaborated in a 2006 paper following fieldwork through the 1990s with migrants from Central America, the term remains enduringly relevant in Trump's America - where the administration has moved to roll back TPS for people from countries such as Afghanistan, Venezuela and Syria. A conversation about precarity, lived experience, and policy - and a reminder that "creating a group of people whose rights are diminishing by the day" harms not only those individuals, but all of us.

**Recorded Sept 2025**

American Dream? Or American nightmare?

The targeting of migrants and minoritised populations under President Trump poses a serious challenge to the long-standing idea that if a person comes to the USA and works hard, they will enjoy social mobility and 'success'. Continuing our series on the role of borders and migration in the roll out of the 'MAGA' project of Trump and his backers, we're joined by Professor Ernesto Castañeda, Director of the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies and the Immigration Lab at American University, Washington, DC. We ask: who still believes in the American Dream? How long can its demolition hold, in a country built on immigration and migrant labour? And what happens - in the USA and beyond - when people start to realise that immigration is not necessarily the cause of the problems they face? A myth-busting conversation on hope, solidarity and change.

When anti-immigration raids intensified in the USA after Trump's return to the presidency, it left many wondering: how could this happen in places like LA, ostensibly a "Sanctuary City"? What, in fact, are sanctuary cities? Launching our new series on the role of borders and migration in the roll out of Donald Trump's MAGA project, Rachel Humphris, author of "Making Sanctuary Cities" joins us to explain all. She outlines the rich history of such places, with roots in both traditions of sheltering refugees but also in activist histories of non-cooperation. Rachel also describes how the term 'Sanctuary Cities' was appropriated in the so-called 'culture wars', used by the right to paint a misleading picture of urban areas as full of "undesirable" outsiders and their apparently woke defenders. Plus, we ask: what does the label 'Sanctuary City' obscure in places such as San Francisco, where many are being forced out as big tech money floods in? And how, by focusing on the history of American cities' complex and caveated relationship to the federal state, might we still hold to a future of hope and resistance?

Michaela and Nando get together to discuss the UK's Labour Government 2025 promise to restore control over immigration by reducing net migration. The resonance with Brexit rhetoric couldn't be clearer in the language and narrative surrounding this. Yet, Brexit remains the elephant in the room. They reflect on several key elements of the paper: health and social care visas, shifts in qualification levels and income requirements, student visas and e-visas. As their conversation highlights, the new immigration plan embeds further the criminalisation of certain migrants—and seeks new ways to do so—while offering no reflection on the absence of safe routes. From the announcements that surrounded the paper to the plans for reforming who can come to the UK and on what terms, what they reveal is the continuing significance of the far right anti-immigration politics in shaping the migration regime in Britain today.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?

In this episode we cover …

1 2025 White Paper 'Restoring Control over the Immigration System'

2 Brexit and migration

3 Net migration

Seminar questions

1. What does the term 'island of strangers' signal to you?

2. What are some of the main changes that the Labour Government are planning to make to the immigration system?

3. Why might it be important that we think about Brexit when considering migration to the UK in 2025?

Find out more about …

The immigration white paper

Listen to ..

Us talking on The Conversation's podcast about how EU leaders want to copy the Rwanda Plan

Our episode with Migrant Rights' Network's Fizza Qureshi on 'safe routes' and the Rwanda Plan

Nando's podcast Mobility, Work and Rights

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What's the significance of migration for the making of 'Global Britain'? And what are the theoretical and conceptual tools that can help to unpack this question? In this episode, we turn our attention to the value of racial capitalism for understanding migration to and from the UK after Brexit. Elena Zambelli explains what we mean when we talk about 'Global Britain,' its political trajectory, and the role of coloniality within it. Ida Danewid, Lecturer in Gender and Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex joins us to offer insights into the relationship between racial capitalism, migration and borders. As she highlights, mobility controls produce the exploitable labour force necessary for capitalist accumulation and how those migrantized resist state violence. And co-hosts Nando Sigona and Michaela Benson consider what a racial capitalism lens adds to understandings of the UK's new suite of humanitarian visas, and more broadly to the role of migration in the making of Global Britain.

You can access the full transcripts for the episode, further resources and active listening questions over on our website: Who do we think we are?

What are the UK Government's 'safe and legal routes'? How do these relate to 'stop the boats', the Rwanda Plan, and the curtailment of asylum as laid out in the 1951 Refugee Convention? What can we learn from listening to the Hong Kongers and Ukrainians beneficiaries of these humanitarian visas? And what if these routes are not so safe after all?

In this episode we explore the UK's safe and legal (humanitarian routes). Elena Zambelli explains what 'asylum' is, looking its history, scope and challenges to these international protections since 2015 'refugee crisis.' Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the Migrants' Rights Network, board member of Migrants at Work and of the honorary advisory committee for the Black Europeans, joins us to offer a critical overview of the UK's immigration and asylum reforms over the past decade. Asking what this tells us about migrants' rights, she highlights how these reforms impact disproportionately on brown and black migrants who try to make the UK their homes. And co-hosts Nando Sigona and Michaela Benson consider the ongoing contestations surrounding the figure of the 'refugee' as well as the asylum system as a whole. They reflect on how beneficiaries of the Hong Kong BN(O) and Ukraine visa schemes experience these humanitarian visas, and what we can learn from them about the limits of these.

You can access the full transcripts for the episode, further resources and active listening questions over on our website: Who do we think we are?

What's Brexit got to do with the 'small boats' crisis? What does racialised border violence in the Channel tell us about 'Global Britain'? And what can we learn about the UK's approach to its borders from the Hong Kong BN(O) and Ukrainian visas? We discuss all of this and more as we turn a lens onto Fortress Britain.

Elena Zambelli explains what we mean when we talk about migrants' irregularisation. We're joined by Arshad Isakjee and Thom Davies talk about their research on the racialised border violence enacted by Fortress Europe and why we need to turn our attention to how this relates to the EU's liberal values. And Nando and Michaela turn the lens back onto UK and its post-Brexit borders as they discuss the new suite of 'safe and legal (humanitarian) routes', and what these signal about the future of asylum within and beyond the UK.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on our website Who do we think we are?

Migrant laborers worldwide are engaged in care work, but who provides care for them? And where can they seek care? In this discussion with Ethel Tungohan, the author of 'Care Activism', we go beyond the headlines that portray migrant domestic workers as victims or heroes. By focusing on their daily lives and the experiences of migrant care workers, we explore various sites of everyday resistance, 'dissident friendships', and the politics of critical hope and care.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode on the Who do we think we are? website.

In this episode we cover …

• Migrant care workers in Canada and the UK
• Migrant agency and everyday lives
• Resistance and care activism

Active Listening Questions

• What can we learn from looking at the everyday lives of the migrants?
• How does Ethel explain why migrant care workers' organisations emerged? And what do they offer to migrant care workers that states do not?
• Why might migrant care workers resist the idea of being 'sisters'? And what alternative ways of understanding the relationships of care between them are discussed in the episode?
• What does care activism make visible about migrant agency?

Read …

Ethel's book Care Activism and article with Jon Careless on how Canadian news media frames temporary migrant workers

Anja K. Franck's article Laughable Borders

Listen to …

Academic Aunties

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