Professor Colin Samson has recently joint-authored a book with Dr Carlos Gigoux Gramegna, Deputy Director of the Centre for Migration Studies at Essex, The Colonialism of Human Rights. The book analyses the many common colonial processes which indigenous peoples continue to experience under the dominion of states, and shows that similar processes of dispossession and violation of rights occur in First and Third World countries.
Professor John Preston, is Deputy Dean (Research) within our Faculty of Social Sciences and Economic, and Social Research Council (ESRC) Leadership Fellow in Conflict, Crime and Security. John works on the sociology of disasters, emergencies and existential threat, and the sociology of education with reference to equity, race, class, Higher Education, Vocational Education and Adult Education. His book, Grenfell Tower Preparedness, Race and Disaster Capitalism was published in 2019.
Ayse Guveli, a Reader in the Department of Sociology, whose research interests mainly comprise stratification and social mobility, international migration, religion, life course, families and gender, has co-authored with Malcolm Brynin Understanding the ethnic pay gap in Britain.
In the paper, Mitigating the Hostile Environment: the role of the workplace in EU migrant experience of Brexit, Professor Renee Luthra asks how Brexit was experienced by highly skilled migrants in a sector reliant on EU migration, and the ways that employment in higher education buffered staff against its impact.
Alita Nandi and Renee Luthra also have a long-standing research programme on the causes and consequences of ethnic and racial harassment. In a series of papers, they examine the association between ethnic and racial harassment and mental health, whether Brexit increased fear and experiences of harassment, and the association between harassment and health behaviours such as smoking and drinking.
Also from the Department of Sociology, Dr Neli Demireva has co-authored with Visiting Fellow Wouter Zwysen research that explores how, as migrants and ethnic minorities in the UK are found to be disadvantaged in their access to work and earnings, little is known about the characteristics of the jobs they occupy, in Ethnic and migrant penalties in job quality in the UK: the role of residential concentration and occupational clustering.
PhD student Nosakhare Imaghodo is pursuing his studies at Essex in the field of inequalities and social justice. He gathers the opinions of Black British activists to examine how racism is reproduced in Britain, and with their perspectives, what could be the solution to all forms of racism in Britain. His research includes systemic racism, anti-Black racism and the Black Lives Matter movement.