From Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, to the Windrush deportation scandal citizenship and the responsibilities of the UK government to the people of Hong Kong, it seems that citizenship and migration in Britain are never far from the headlines. Who do we think we are? explores all of this and more. Join Professor Michaela Benson and her guests as they debunk taken-for-granted understandings of who is a citizen and who is a migrant in Britain today.
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**
12 Dec 2025
S4 E4 Free speech for whom?
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**
14 Nov 2025
S4 E3 Forever Undocumented
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**
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