Dr Agnieszka Radziwinowiczówna, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow studied this new deportation system from the perspective of social sciences and offered a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach to the study of UK deportation regime in statu nascendi, embracing immigration policies, media discourse accompanying it, material infrastructure, and the groups targeted with deportability and deportation. The ethnographic study, which consisted in observation and interviews, analysed the specific case of Polish migrants, the largest migrant group from EU in the UK. The research focused on England, mainly on the West Midlands, a region characterised by a high presence of EU migrants, especially from Central and Eastern European Union. In addition, this region had the highest share of the ‘leave’ vote (59.3%) in the referendum in June 2016.
Radziwinowiczówna’s research on past deportations from the UK has demonstrated that class, ethnic and national background, as well as cultural capital determine the deportability of EU citizens. Eastern Europeans have been overrepresented among the deportees – in 2020, 69% of all the people deported from the UK came from Romania, Poland and Lithuania, although these three nations made up only 39% of EU citizens in the UK. If the current deportation patters continue after the end of the freedom of movement and Immigration Rules change as it was announced in October 2020, the new UK deportation system will reproduce the systemic inequalities between EU citizens and the division between ‘old’ and ‘new’ member states.
In order to popularize the results of the BRAD research, Radziwinowiczówna participated in six conferences, three seminars, three workshops and four public events. She was invited speaker at the University of Sheffield, Edge Hill University and University of Wolverhampton (UK), Tec de Monterrey (Mexico), Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany) and University of Warsaw (Poland). She also organized international workshop ‘Why and how should we research the deportation of foreigners? Epistemological, methodological and ethical issues in deportation studies’.
The first publications of the BRAD project can be consulted under the ‘Results’ section on the right. The publication process in academic journals and scholarly editorials takes more time than the lifetime of a research project and important publications will be published after the end of BRAD. One academic article and one chapter in edited collection are currently under review and work on other two articles and on a special issue co-edited by Agnieszka is in progress. For a comprehensive and actualised list of Radziwinowiczówna publications, please consult her website:
https://radziwinowiczowna.org/publications/(opens in new window)Apart from scientific publications, Agnieszka prioritized popularisation of BRAD’s results among general public. She has authored one and co-authored two blog posts on LSE Brexit, Border Criminologies and Justice Gap. Radziwinowiczówna on several occasions was invited to Polish radio stations, where she explained the changing migration regulations for EU citizens in the UK. Dissemination of BRAD’s results was also aimed at migrants and – more broadly – EU citizens, and also targeted a widely-read Polish information websites for Poles in the UK.
The list of dissemination activities includes lessons for children and teenagers organised in a primary school in Warsaw (see the Image 3 below). The objective of the lesson was to make the pupils understand the changing character of the national and supra-national borders. On the basis of real-life experiences of their peers, school kids were prompted to analyse the social consequences of this change.
