Nick Gill

Appeals are a crucial part of Europe’s asylum system but they remain poorly understood. Building on insights and perspectives from legal geography and socio-legal studies, this book shines a light on what takes place during asylum appeals and puts forward suggestions for improving their fairness and accessibility. Drawing on hundreds of ethnographic observations of appeal hearings, as well as research interviews, the authors paint a detailed picture of the limitations of refugee protection available through asylum appeals. Refugee law can appear dependable and reliable in policy documents and legal texts. However, this work reveals that, in reality, myriad social, political, psychological, linguistic, contextual and economic factors interfere with and frequently confound the protection that refugee law promises during its concrete enactment. Drawing on evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, the book equips readers with a clear sense of the fragility of legal protection for people forced to migrate to Europe. The book will appeal to scholars of migration studies, legal studies, legal geography and the social sciences generally, as well as practitioners in asylum law throughout Europe and beyond. This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Appeals are a crucial part of Europe’s asylum system but they remain poorly understood. Building on insights and perspectives from legal geography and socio-legal studies, this book shines a light on what takes place during asylum appeals and puts forward suggestions for improving their fairness and accessibility. Drawing on hundreds of ethnographic observations of appeal hearings, as well as research interviews, the authors paint a detailed picture of the limitations of refugee protection available through asylum appeals. Refugee law can appear dependable and reliable in policy documents and legal texts. However, this work reveals that, in reality, myriad social, political, psychological, linguistic, contextual and economic factors interfere with and frequently confound the protection that refugee law promises during its concrete enactment. Drawing on evidence from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the United Kingdom, the book equips readers with a clear sense of the fragility of legal protection for people forced to migrate to Europe. The book will appeal to scholars of migration studies, legal studies, legal geography and the social sciences generally, as well as practitioners in asylum law throughout Europe and beyond.This book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

A heartwarming rhyming picture book about a little dragon who wishes he was special like his friends … but soon discovers that he’s special in his own way. Donny is desperate to learn how to breathe fire, but he just doesn’t have the spark! While his friends are shooting flames everywhere, Donny can only breathe water. He wishes he was special like them, until the day he encounters a problem that only he can help with … > A moving, gently funny story about ‘specialness’ and celebrating our strengths, even if they’re wetter than we’d like them to be!

This book gives a proof of Cherlin’s conjecture for finite binary primitive permutation groups. Motivated by the part of model theory concerned with Lachlan’s theory of finite homogeneous relational structures, this conjecture proposes a classification of those finite primitive permutation groups that have relational complexity equal to 2. The first part gives a full introduction to Cherlin’s conjecture, including all the key ideas that have been used in the literature to prove some of its special cases. The second part completes the proof by dealing with primitive permutation groups that are almost simple with socle a group of Lie type. A great deal of material concerning properties of primitive permutation groups and almost simple groups is included, and new ideas are introduced. Addressing a hot topic which cuts across the disciplines of group theory, model theory and logic, this book will be of interest toa wide range of readers. It will be particularly useful for graduate students and researchers who need to work with simple groups of Lie type.

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives - sociological, anthropological, geographical and linguistic - but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

Drawing on new research material from ten European countries, Asylum Determination in Europe: Ethnographic Perspectives brings together a range of detailed accounts of the legal and bureaucratic processes by which asylum claims are decided.The book includes a legal overview of European asylum determination procedures, followed by sections on the diverse actors involved, the means by which they communicate, and the ways in which they make life and death decisions on a daily basis. It offers a contextually rich account that moves beyond doctrinal law to uncover the gaps and variances between formal policy and legislation, and law as actually practiced. The contributors employ a variety of disciplinary perspectives - sociological, anthropological, geographical and linguistic - but are united in their use of an ethnographic methodological approach. Through this lens, the book captures the confusion, improvisation, inconsistency, complexity and emotional turmoil inherent to the process of claiming asylum in Europe. This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.

This book draws together the work of a new community of scholars with a growing interest in carceral geography: the geographical study of practices of imprisonment and detention. It combines work by geographers on 'mainstream' penal establishments where people are incarcerated by the prevailing legal system, with geographers' recent work on migrant detention centres, where irregular migrants and 'refused' asylum seekers are detained, ostensibly pending decisions on admittance or repatriation. Working in these contexts, the book's contributors investigate the geographical location and spatialities of institutions, the nature of spaces of incarceration and detention and experiences inside them, governmentality and prisoner agency, cultural geographies of penal spaces, and mobility in the carceral context. In dialogue with emergent and topical agendas in geography around mobility, space and agency, and in relation to international policy challenges such as the (dis)functionality of imprisonment and the search for alternatives to detention, this book presents a timely addition to emergent interdisciplinary scholarship that will prompt dialogue among those working in geography, criminology and prison sociology.

In this groundbreaking new study, Nick Gill provides a conceptually innovative account of the ways in which indifference to the desperation and hardship faced by thousands of migrants fleeing persecution and exploitation comes about. Features original, unpublished empirical material from four Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projectsChallenges the consensus that border controls are necessary or desirable in contemporary societyDemonstrates how immigration decision makers are immersed in a suffocating web of institutionalized processes that greatly hinder their objectivity and limit their access to alternative perspectivesTheoretically informed throughout, drawing on the work of a range of social theorists, including Max Weber, Zygmunt Bauman, Emmanuel Levinas, and Georg Simmel

In this groundbreaking new study, Nick Gill provides a conceptually innovative account of the ways in which indifference to the desperation and hardship faced by thousands of migrants fleeing persecution and exploitation comes about. Features original, unpublished empirical material from four Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projectsChallenges the consensus that border controls are necessary or desirable in contemporary societyDemonstrates how immigration decision makers are immersed in a suffocating web of institutionalized processes that greatly hinder their objectivity and limit their access to alternative perspectivesTheoretically informed throughout, drawing on the work of a range of social theorists, including Max Weber, Zygmunt Bauman, Emmanuel Levinas, and Georg Simmel

“Look. no one cares. no one cares what we do as long as we’re here, doing what we’re told”Welcome to Fiji Land. Things are very simple here. Follow orders. Fight the good fight. You can even take photos. Grainer’s new. He asked to come over here. Wolstead likes to watch people while they sleep. Meanwhile, Tanc’s here to do what he’s told and do it proper.Fiji Land is a surreal and incisive play about the very real things that happen when cell doors shut and the world looks away.“as long as we’re safe, we don’t want to know what’s going on to keep it that way, do we?”

This book draws together the work of a new community of scholars with a growing interest in carceral geography: the geographical study of practices of imprisonment and detention. It combines work by geographers on 'mainstream' penal establishments where people are incarcerated by the prevailing legal system, with geographers' recent work on migrant detention centres, where irregular migrants and 'refused' asylum seekers are detained, ostensibly pending decisions on admittance or repatriation. Working in these contexts, the book's contributors investigate the geographical location and spatialities of institutions, the nature of spaces of incarceration and detention and experiences inside them, governmentality and prisoner agency, cultural geographies of penal spaces, and mobility in the carceral context. In dialogue with emergent and topical agendas in geography around mobility, space and agency, and in relation to international policy challenges such as the (dis)functionality of imprisonment and the search for alternatives to detention, this book presents a timely addition to emergent interdisciplinary scholarship that will prompt dialogue among those working in geography, criminology and prison sociology.

"You might at least say thank you, Jenny. I’ve been out digging a hole for your boyfriend all night. Not to mention severing his legs. Have you ever severed a leg? It’s not as easy as it looks. Not with a blunt spade."Jane is a housewife. James sells guns. They live in one of the larger cities in Our Country and are both terrified of ethnic youths who might well be wearing hoods and carrying knives,or something. All is well in the Jones household, until their sexually frustrated eighteen-year-old daughter Jenny brings home her new boyfriend, Kwesi Abalo... A visceral, smart, brutally hilarious play about prejudice, arms dealing, and what it means to be English.Nominated for four Off West End Awards Best Director - Kate Wasserberg Best Female performance - Louise Collins Most Promising Playwright - Nick Gill Best New Play