In 2024 I was awarded a British Academy Mid Career Fellowship (2024-26) titled Britain's Child Migrants (MFSS24\240067).

From declared refugee and migrant crises to the public inquiry into post-World War Two child migration schemes between Britain and Australia, child migrants have featured prominently within emotive public debates in Britain on rights, citizenship, and Britishness. Through the intersection of child welfare and immigration policy discourses, child migrants are subjects through which the values and boundaries of national belonging are interrogated. Yet limited connection has made across cases involving different categories of child migrants moving to and from the British Isles. Britain’s Child Migrants addresses this gap through investigating what thinking across cases of child migration to and from Britain (1938-2024) through a conceptual framework of ‘bordering through (un)childing' reveals about the evolution and shaping of a national politics of identity and citizenship in the context of Britain’s journey from empire to ‘Global Britain’.

I am currently writing a book based on this research, titled Britain's Child Migrants (under contract with Manchester University Press).

Educational Resources

This animated video – Threads of Migration - tells the story of two different children at two different times and from two different places who move on their own to live in a different country – child migrants. The illustration is the story of Max, a Jewish boy escaping Nazi Germany in 1939. The video and illustration are composite stories based on archive material and Dr Ala Sirriyeh’s empirical research and media news stories about children seeking asylum.