Mary Bosworth and Alpa Parmar Awarded John Fell Fund Grant

The Centre for Criminology is delighted to announce that Professor Mary Bosworth and Dr Alpa Parmar’s application to the University of Oxford’s John Fell Fund for research into policing migration was successful! Generous funding for this study will run for 15 months starting 1 January 2016.

Professor Bosworth and Dr Parmar’s research aims to shed light on the changing nature of policing under conditions of mass mobility by conducting two case studies with (a) Thames Valley Police and (b) immigration case workers who determine whether to detain and deport. In so doing, they will provide unique empirical material to understand better the relationship between criminal justice and immigration control. Key questions they seek to examine include: What happens to the role, legitimacy, and nature of the police when they are asked to monitor migration matters? How do individual staff members do and perceive their jobs? What do immigration case workers actually do and how do they decide whom to detain or deport? How do they understand their role and its widening remit? What are some of the effects of the growing intersections between case workers and the police? How is information shared between the police and the Immigration Directorate and is this process meaningful and effective?

Read more about the study’s announcement here on the Border Criminologies blog.