I am a sociologist of migration and race with a primary focus on children and young people, activism, and emotions. In my research I critically engage with discourses around migrant and refugee young people, exploring how as active agents they live with and resist the criminalisation of migration and exclusion. I also examine youth and student led anti-racist and decolonial mobilisation and the repression and securitisation of these movements.

I recently completed a British Academy Mid Career Fellowship titled Britain's Child Migrants (2024-25) which included working with Lily Mae Kroese (illustrator) and Shire Oak Primary School in Leeds to produce a short film and accompanying educational resources for Key Stage 2 (approx. 9-11 year olds). These resources are available free of charge here under the Britain's Child Migrants tab.

I am currently writing my third monograph, Britain's Child Migrants. This builds on previous two books to explore the central role of migrant children and childhood in contemporary state bordering and immigration regimes. In my second monograph, The Politics of Compassion (Bristol University Press, 2018), I drew on fieldwork in the UK, US, and Australia to explore immigration enforcement and resistance, investigating the central and nuanced role of emotions in this context. In this book I focussed on discourses around refugee and undocumented children and young people to explore compassion and its relationship to other emotions in asylum and immigration policy discourses. These themes developed out of my first research project (ESRC funded PhD) and book, Inhabiting Borders, Routes Home (Ashgate, 2013; Routledge, 2016) which explored young refugee women’s narratives of ‘home’ in the context of their migration to the UK and transitions to adulthood. This was one of the first UK studies to explore the experiences of young refugees beyond the age of 18.

I am committed to public engagement and communication on the topic of migration. I have co-hosted (with Michaela Benson) Who Do We Think We Are? Beyond the Headlines, a podcast series which dissects the major global news stories about migration today and am regularly interviewed in the media about immigration policy.