Migration, diversity and religion

This theme brings together researchers from the Department of Social Policy, Sociology & Criminology who seek to consider the role and impact of ethnicity and religion across a range of different social, political and cultural settings. 

Approaching our subject matter from a range of different disciplinary and methodological start points, our collective endeavours intersect and overlap with a number of other departmental themes including inequality, exclusion, migration and social harm. This is evident in our shared research interests which encompass discrimination, hate crime, celebrity culture, media representation, identity, the far-right, heterogeneity, urban planning and superdiversity.

Lead: Ingrid Storm

Current and recent research

  • Integrated intersectional and socioecological approach: Engaging with religion to strengthen protection from violence against women in forced displacement

    This project is led by Dr Sandra Pertek. It explores how intersectional and socioecological approaches could be strengthened to account for socio-cultural and religious factors in preventing and responding to violence against women in forced displacement, humanitarian and migration settings.

  • Protecting forcibly displaced women and girls in the Muslim world

    This policy-oriented research project explores the motivations, opportunities and challenges for protecting displaced women and girls in the Muslim majority countries. It aims to develop an evidence base and conceptual resources for integrating the protection of forcibly displaced women and girls from violence, discrimination and exclusion into humanitarian policy and diplomacy in the Muslim world. The project lead is Dr Sandra Pertek. 

  • Pathways to socio-economic and civic-political inclusion of ethnic minorities in Britain and Canada

    This project was funded by the ESRC under the Secondary Data Analysis Initiative (Phase 3 – project ES/N011635/1). The aim of the project was to investigate the patterns of ethnic minority inclusion within British and Canadian socio-economic and civic-political institutions over time and assess the role that family capital, here understood as an aggregation of family resources, plays in determining the inclusion trajectories of individuals. The research team included investigators at the University of Manchester, McGill University and the Runnymede Trust.

Publications

2017

Bennett, M. R.,Einolf. C. (2017). Religion, Altruism, and Helping Strangers: A Multilevel Analysis of 123 Countries.Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 56(2):323;341.

Gonzales, R. G. and Sigona, N. (eds) (2017) Within and beyond citizenship: Borders, membership and belonging. (BSA Sociological Futures Series) London and New York: Routledge

Grzymala-Kazlowska, A. & Phillimore, J. (2017) Introduction: rethinking integration.  New perspectives on adaption and settlement in the era of superdiversity.  Journal and Ethnic and Migration studies.  www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1341706www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1341706

Phillimore, J., Humphris, R. & Khan, K. (2017) Reciprocity for new migrant integration: resource conservation, investment and exchange.  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studieswww.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1341709

Picker, G. (2017). Racial Cities: Governance and the Segregation of Romani People in Urban Europe. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.

Picker, G. (2017) ‘Post-Socialist Europe and its “Constitutive Outside”: Ethnographic Resemblances for a Comparative Research Agenda’. In J. Krase and Z. Uherek (eds), The Local Context of Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 39-53.

2016

Cheung, S. & Phillimore, J. (2016) Gender and refugee integration: a quantitative analysis of integration and social policy outcomes.  Journal of Social Policy. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279416000775

Picker, G. (2016). ‘“That neighbourhood is an ethnic bomb!” The emergence of an urban governance apparatus in Western Europe’, European Urban and Regional Studies, 23(2): 136-148.

Lessard-Phillips, L. (2016). Richard Alba & Nancy Foner, Strangers No More: Immigration and the Challenges of Integration in North America and Western Europe. European Sociological Review, 32(2), pp. 321-323.

Phillimore, J. & Bradby, H. (2016). In Raphael, D. Ed. Public Policy, Immigrant Experiences and Health Outcomes in the UK.   In Immigration, Public Policy, and health: newcomer experiences in developed nations. Newcomer experiences in developed nations.  Toronto: Canadian Scholars Press pp133-156.

Sigona, N (2016) ‘Everyday statelessness: status, rights and camps’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39 (2): 263-279.

Members of the Migration, diversity and religion theme

Dr Gëzim Alpion

Dr Gëzim Alpion

Assistant Professor of Sociology
Director of Employability for the School of Social Policy

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Educated at Cairo University and Durham University, Gëzim Alpion lectured at the Universities of Huddersfield, Sheffield Hallam, and Newman prior to his appointment in 2002 in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He joined the Department of Political Science and International Studies in 2010 and the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology in ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 3241
Email
g.i.alpion@bham.ac.uk

Dr Lisa Goodson

Dr Lisa Goodson

Lecturer

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Lisa Goodson is a lecturer in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology where she co-ordinates social policy research modules at post graduate level as well as teaching and tutoring on undergraduate modules in new migration. Lisa has been at the forefront of research exploring the experiences and consequences of migration in the UK and Europe. Common themes that cut across ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 4993
Email
l.j.goodson@bham.ac.uk

Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips

Dr Laurence Lessard-Phillips

Senior Research Fellow, IRiS

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Laurence Lessard-Phillips is a Senior Research Fellow who joined the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) in May 2016. Her main research interests lie in the perceptions, measurement, and dimensionality of immigrant adaptation; ethnic inequalities in education and the labour market; the transnational behaviour across immigrant generations; and social inequalities and social mobility. ...

Email
l.lessard-phillips@bham.ac.uk

Professor Jenny Phillimore

Professor Jenny Phillimore

Professor of Migration and Superdiversity

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Jenny Phillimore is Professor of Migration and Superdiversity. She is a world leading scholar in refugee integration, superdiversity and access to social welfare with a particular focus on public health.  Jenny is also an expert on Community Sponsorship.

She managers teams of researchers focusing on access to health, education, employment, training, and housing integration with a particular ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 414 7822
Email
j.a.phillimore@bham.ac.uk

Professor Nando Sigona

Professor Nando Sigona

Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement
Director of IRiS

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Nando Sigona is a social scientist with over fifteen years research and teaching experience in migration, refugee, citizenship and ethnic studies. He is the Director of the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) and a Research Associate at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre.

Professor Sigona’s work investigates the migration and citizenship nexus. ...

Telephone
+44(0)121 415 8030
Email
n.sigona@bham.ac.uk

Dr Ingrid Storm

Birmingham Fellow

Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology

Ingrid Storm is a Birmingham Fellow in the Department for Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology in the School of Social Policy.  She is a sociologist of religion and her main interests are in religious change and the impact of religion on social behaviour.

She currently works on a large EU-funded international project focusing on inequality and youth radicalisation, She is ...

Telephone
+44 (0)121 414 5721
Email
i.k.storm@bham.ac.uk