POSTPONED: Listening as Mutual Learning at the London Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal against the Hostile Environment

NB - THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

We are delighted to welcome Professor Leah Bassel (University of Roehampton)to deliver the School Research Seminar.

We are delighted to welcome Professor Leah Bassel (University of Roehampton)to deliver the School Research Seminar.Abstract: International people’s tribunals date back to post World War II era, starting in the 1960s, with the Russell Tribunals on Vietnam and Latin America.  This presentation explores one such initiative: the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) hearing, ‘The Hostile Environment on Trial’, which took place in London, United Kingdom in 2018. 

How does a people’s tribunal with no legal enforcement powers act as a form of resistance to the UK’s Hostile Environment policy? I explore a politics of listening as the bridge between a gathering designated as a tribunal to put the Hostile Environment on trial and the acts of resistance that can become possible.  Through this tribunal process, campaigns and activism can be transformed to connect with other struggles that reinforce as they reconfigure migrant justice

About Leah Bassel

Leah Bassel is Professor of Sociology at the University of Roehampton, UK.  Her research interests include the political sociology of migration, intersectionality and citizenship.  
Leah’s books include The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life (Palgrave, 2017), and Minority Women and Austerity: Survival and Resistance in France and Britain co-authored with Akwugo Emejulu (Policy Press 2017). 

Before pursuing an academic career, Leah was an emergency outreach worker in Paris where she provided humanitarian assistance to asylum seekers and created a circus camp project for refugee youth.