Active listening questions

• After listening to the podcast how would you define British Citizenship?
• What example of a change in citizenship law was the most impactful to you and why?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how / how not?

• After listening to the podcast how would you define belonging?
• What example of a change in immigration legislation was the most impactful to you and why?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

1. List three long term impacts caused by deportation during the Windrush scandal
2. What example of the Windrush scandal was the most impactful to you and why?
3. Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• How did the British Nationality Act 1981 racialise others through its design?
• After listening to the podcast how would you define ‘the global immigration industry’?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• After listening to the podcast how would you define citizenisation?
• Which barrier within the citizenship test was the most impactful to you and why?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• What condition introduced in the Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) visa scheme was the most unfair to you and why?
• List 3 limitations associated with the Hong Kong BN(O) visa scheme
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• After listening to the podcast how would you define the relationship between language and nation-building
• What is one political function of introducing language testing?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• What does the case of Shamima Begum highlight about Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill?
• After listening to the podcast how do attempts to securitise Britain lead to discrimination?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• What does the case of Shamima Begum highlight about Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill?
• After listening to the podcast how do attempts to securitise Britain lead to discrimination?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• What is the key goal of the British Indian Ocean Territory Citizens Campaign?
• List three ways the British Overseas Territories Act of 2002 has restricted access to nationality for many
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

• List 3 inequalities that are present in the global response to the Ukraine war
• What role does language play in the discourse of accepting Ukranian refugees?
• Has this changed how you view media headlines? how/how not?

• What requirement/clause within the nationality and borders bill was the most impactful and why?
• After listening to the podcast how would you define the language of illegality?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how / how not?

• Give one example of how the far right has been mainstreamed
• What role does media play in the portrayal of mass shootings as racist violence
• Has this changed how you view media headlines? how/how not?

• What example of an inequality caused by citizenship was the most impactful and why?
• After listening to the podcast how would you define the concept of Forgotten Europe?
• Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

•  What example of resistance was the most impactful and why?
•  How would you define migrant solidarity?
•  Has this changed how you view your own acts of resistance how/how not?

1. What example of an act of citizenship was the most impactful? Are there any similar current examples of acts of citizenship that spring to mind?
2. After listening to the podcast how would you define acts of citizenship?
3. Has this podcast changed how you view your own acts of resistance? And in what ways?

1. What example of family migration was the most impactful and why?
2. What was the purpose of increasing annual income threshold for sponsors?
3. Has this changed how you view your own citizenship, how/how not?

1. What inequalities does the lack of ID cards create in Britain
2. How would you define the hostile environment?
3. Has this changed how you view your own border control experience, how/how not?

1. How has Brexit changed access to British citizenship based on an economic rationale?
2. How are ideas of what it means to be British presented through discourse with the EU?
3. Has this changed how you view your own citizenship? And in what ways?

• What imagined community, or imagined communities, do you feel that you belong to?  
• Are there public events during which you do or could celebrate your belonging to this or these communities? Which ones? 
• Who do you think is excluded from this imagined community and how? And what does this tell us about the symbolic boundaries of this community?

• How would you describe Freedom of Movement?
• What factors might shape people’s experience of moving within the EU? And relatedly, what challenges or opportunities might people face when they move within the EU?
• What role does migration play in creating and maintaining a ‘community of Europeans’?
• In what ways has Brexit changed how you - your family & friends - can move to or within the EU?

• Do you have any family members who have emigrated from their country of origin? What do you know about their reasons for leaving? 
• What do you think understanding emigration can add to our understandings of migration?  
• What is the relationship between British emigration and British colonialism? And how does this shape the experiences of British citizens emigrating today?
• What relationship does your country have with its citizens who have moved abroad?  

• How would you define a migration regime? 
• What do migration regimes do for states? 
• In what ways has the UK’s migration regime changed since Brexit, if at all? 

• What does ‘migration diplomacy’ mean? 
• What actors do and can engage in migration diplomacy? 
• What diplomatic instruments can states use to govern international migration? 
• Which new visa routes and trade and mobility agreements has Britain negotiated and/or implemented since Brexit?  

• What digital technologies do states use at the border?
• When and where can and does digital bordering take place?
• Is digital proof of immigration status secure?
• What risks do migrants and citizens face in the growing use of digital technologies?

1. What does it mean to call for museums to decolonise? And how does the Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging project approach this in your opinion?
2. Participatory research takes seriously the power dynamics between researchers and those taking part in research. What do you think the strengths are of a participatory arts project such as this for troubling power and privilege within the research process?
3. Why did the young people who took part in the Ancient History, Contemporary Belonging project object to the idea that their art works would be presented as a ‘disruption’?

How would you define a mixed-status family?

Why do states regulate family migrations and with what effect?

What branches of law affect the lives of mixed-status families?

Is a family’s mixed-status permanent? If not, what routes do families take to overcome status inequalities?

• When and how do migrants become irregularised?
• What do you understand by the concept of border violence? And what examples discussed in the episode particularly stand out to you?
• What are the UK’s ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes? And what is distinctive about these in comparison to provisions for asylum and refugees outlined in the Geneva Convention?

• When and what was the institution of asylum established for?
• Are there differences between asylum and the UK’s ‘safe and legal (humanitarian) routes’? How would you describe and explain these differences?
• What does the UK’s preference for ad hoc humanitarian protection routes reveal about its approach to migration governance after Brexit?

What is racial capitalism?

What does a lens onto racial capitalism reveal about the work of borders and migration controls?

Does racial capitalism change how your understanding of UK’s migration regime after Brexit? In what ways?

• What does the term ‘island of strangers’ signal to you?
• What are some of the main changes that the Labour Government are planning to make to the immigration system?
• Why might it be important that we think about Brexit when considering migration to the UK in 2025?

1. Why is it important to think about what terms such as ‘sanctuary city’ obscure, as well as what they express and signify? 
2. Can you think of other terms in the field of migration studies that have, like ‘Sanctuary Cities’ taken on a life of their own or been weaponised as part of the so-called culture wars?
3. How does thinking about the history - and possibilities - of urban governance allow us to imagine more socially just futures?

1. At a time of growing inequality in the USA, many children from immigrant families are no longer able to do better than their parents. What are the consequences of this?
2. Is the meaning of “whiteness” fluid or fixed? And what does it mean in the context of MAGA America?
3. What does Ernesto mean when he says that process of inclusion can coexist with processes of exclusion? And what examples of solidarity does he identify?
4. In recent years, we’ve seen the politicisation of immigration in the USA, the UK and beyond. Does this discourse look set to last? What might cause it to diminish?

1. What did Cecilia mean by "liminal legality" when she coined the term in her 2006 paper? And how is it manifest today? 

2. How might geopolitics play a role in whether an individual with a given nationality is labelled as a refugees or asylum seeker?

3. Why is it important to look beyond labour market experience when we consider the experience of people labelled as migrants? What and what stands to gain when minoritised or vulnerable people are rendered "impermanent" or "temporary"?

4. What does Cecilia's approach show about the value of using sociological research and analysis to complicate seemingly neat binaries? 

5. Cecilia talks about how the precaritisation of some people's migration status "reverberates across US society", impacting us all. What does she mean by this and how does it connect with what Michaela speaks of as "de-migrantising" migration research? 

• How has “whiteness” been privileged in the history of the USA while, at the same time, its definition has morphed and shifted? 
• What is the value of thinking of borders in terms of their various costs, as Heba does here, rather than seeing them as simply stationary objects and infrastructures? 
• What does Heba mean when she says that “borders eventually rot the nation out, from within, that erects them”.
• How can we define academic freedom, and how can we think about its current challenges sociologically?

Why do cities often take the lead in supporting migrants’ rights, in contrast to the states of which they are a part?

How can thinking historically help sociologists better understand the present moment?

What does Michaela mean by the “weaponisation of asylum in the context of global geopolitics”?

How does policy and discourse at the top shape what sociologists call the everyday “structure of feeling” on the ground?

Why is legal status not necessarily enough to determine whether or not someone gets branded a ‘migrant’ in a time of overarching racist discourse? Relatedly, what might it mean to ‘demigrantise’ migration research?