Of her involvement with Asylum Justice, Professor Anderson writes, “High quality legal advice and representation is crucial in a system that is weighted against the recognition of asylum claims. Asylum Justice offers legal support to the most marginalised in our society. We have seen how the erosion of rights to legal aid of the most vulnerable non-citizens can affect us all. Supporting Asylum Justice is not only about solidarity with asylum seekers but recognising that the right to justice is something that we all have a stake in.”

Bridget Anderson is the Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship. Her post is split between the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Bridget has a DPhil in Sociology and previous training in Philosophy and Modern Languages. She is the author of Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (Zed Books, 2000). She co-edited Who Needs Migrant Workers? Labour Shortages, Immigration and Public Policy with Martin Ruhs (Oxford University Press, 2010 and 2012), The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation with Matthew Gibney and Emanuela Paoletti (Springer, 2013) and Migration and Care Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics with Isabel Shutes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Bridget takes as her starting point that the ‘migrant’ and the ‘citizen’ and the differences between them are constructed in law and in social and political practice. Research also plays an important role in this, raising important ethical, epistemological and political questions. She is interested in the relation between migration, race, and nation, historically and in the contemporary world. She understands the mobility of people in the context of mobilities of goods, finance and ideas, mobilities whose speed and patterns are significantly changing in the face of technological developments. Her work explores the relations between migration, temporalities and future making claims, with a particular focus on precarity, labour market flexibilities and citizenship rights. She has pioneered an understanding of functions of immigration in essential economic sectors. Bridget has worked closely with migrants’ organisations, trades unions and legal practitioners at local, national and international levels.