Tom Vickers

Opportunities and Limitations for Collective Resistance Arising from Volunteering by Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Northern England

This article asks whether volunteering by refugees and asylum seekers holds potential to foster collective resistance to the British state’s increasingly punitive asylum policies. It draws on research that included four organizational case studies and in-depth qualitative interviews with refugees and asylum seekers volunteering in a city in Northern England, and analyses this data using inter-related concepts of contradiction, hegemony and social capital. This research found that volunteering by refugees and asylum seekers had potential to contribute to cohesive social blocs that might form a basis for resistance, yet also exhibited tendencies to divide refugees and encourage individualized forms of action, which reinforced a subordinate position for the majority. The article concludes that realizing the potential of voluntary activity as a basis for collective resistance to the state’s asylum policies may require it to be combined with political education and organization.

Disposable labour, passive victim, active threat: migrant/non-migrant othering in three British television documentaries

This article analyses discourses about migration within three documentaries that were broadcast on terrestrial British television in January 2014: The Truth about Immigration in the UK and The Hidden World of Britain’s Immigrants, both broadcast on BBC Two, and Episode 2 of Benefits Street, broadcast on Channel 4. The methodology involved a detailed analysis of the documentaries, situated within a Marxist analysis of British capitalism, the capitalist crisis, and the economic and political position of migrants. Amidst the contradictions and complexities that were identified within these documentaries, representations of ‘migrants’ can be grouped into three categories: disposable labour, passive victim, and active threat. We argue these discursive roles reflect and reinforce capitalist exploitation, by constructing ‘migrants’ as a mutable ‘other’ to divide the working class.

Book Review Symposium: Michael Burawoy (ed.), Precarious Engagements: Combat in the Realm of Public Sociology

Precarious Engagements demands of its authors that they reflect critically upon their research process at the same time that they think critically about the work of the discipline as a whole. Most essays successfully balance self-reflection and disciplinary critique. A few offer too much self-reflection that is not adequately positioned within the literature on public sociology, or meta sociology more generally. The reader is left to discover conclusions about how this experience advances our understanding of public sociology in academic or political fields. Yet overall the volume remains a strong contribution to the study of sociological method and the role of sociologists as students of and members of civil society. It is important reading for academics and graduate students, who will appreciate the models of sociology presented herein.

Marxist approaches to social work

This article explores the diversity within Marxist approaches to social work, outlining key aspects of Marxism and the implications for social work under capitalist states, in situations where states break down, and under socialist states. Within each of these contexts, key examples are explored to demonstrate the range of approaches taken. The article argues that there has been a neglect in the English-language literature of Marxist approaches to social work under socialism, and suggests that recent moves to open up the definition of social work through the concept of ‘popular social work’ offer one approach to begin filling this gap.