Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1400 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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This volume draws a comprehensive picture of the modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) victim/survivor trajectory. The main aim has been to offer a critical, yet ‘down-to-earth’, overview of the victim/survivor journey, intended both in actual and metaphorical terms. To achieve this, we have put together contributors across the chapters from different fields and perspectives, including from academic and non-academic fields (academic who are also-practitioners or academic writing together with practitioners). While some draw from critical theories (in power, race, migration, gender, epistemology), others are descriptive of a specific phenomenon of investigation.
The volume is a multifaceted and four-dimensional exploration of the journey of the trafficked person. From recruitment through to representation and (re)integration to an examination of the intersection of MSHT with other discourses, in media, films and services; from the macro perspective of organised crime and large business, to the micro-physics of the processes of self- and sense-making of assisted survivors; from how the demand from the UK impacts the online sexual exploitation of children on the other side of the world, to how legal cases are conducted in the UK, it will enable the reader to ‘connect the dots’ making up this journey. By approaching this complex topic – understood both as an actual phenomenon and as a construct – from different angles, professional roles and positionings, we would like to equip readers to be able to build up their own, better-informed interpretations of ‘the victim’s journey’.
Describes the critical role of Muslim prison chaplaincy in Muslim prison life through prisoners’ experiences of chaplains and the chaplains’ experiences of prisoners, with a particular focus on Statutory Duties, Friday Prayer and Islamic Studies classes. This chapter articulates some principles for best practice derived from the views and experiences of Muslim prison chaplains themselves.
This volume draws a comprehensive picture of the modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) victim/survivor trajectory. The main aim has been to offer a critical, yet ‘down-to-earth’, overview of the victim/survivor journey, intended both in actual and metaphorical terms. To achieve this, we have put together contributors across the chapters from different fields and perspectives, including from academic and non-academic fields (academic who are also-practitioners or academic writing together with practitioners). While some draw from critical theories (in power, race, migration, gender, epistemology), others are descriptive of a specific phenomenon of investigation.
The volume is a multifaceted and four-dimensional exploration of the journey of the trafficked person. From recruitment through to representation and (re)integration to an examination of the intersection of MSHT with other discourses, in media, films and services; from the macro perspective of organised crime and large business, to the micro-physics of the processes of self- and sense-making of assisted survivors; from how the demand from the UK impacts the online sexual exploitation of children on the other side of the world, to how legal cases are conducted in the UK, it will enable the reader to ‘connect the dots’ making up this journey. By approaching this complex topic – understood both as an actual phenomenon and as a construct – from different angles, professional roles and positionings, we would like to equip readers to be able to build up their own, better-informed interpretations of ‘the victim’s journey’.
In this conclusion, we deepen how this volume is a multifaceted and four-dimensional exploration of the journey of the victim/survivor of modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT). We highlight how the effort of all contributions was directed at bridging a few disconnections, in order to lay the foundations for a terrain in critical modern slavery studies where survivors/victims will have more voice, and power. One key disconnection is the one between ideologies/representations and practices, another one is between the recruitment and the recovery moment, and finally another separation the volume criticises is that between Global North and South. There are several areas of MSHT that could not be covered, such as survivors’ rehabilitation into employment opportunities or policing practices and attitudes. Another limitation of the volume is the insufficient involvement of survivors. However, this book has tried to decolonise the discourse of MSHT via assembling contributions from different positions and roles to fragment a monolithic view on the phenomenon and to cast light on different moments of MSHT – what we have called the victim journey – to show the complexity of the phenomenon. This collection intends to promote an approach and awareness of contexts favouring survivors’ self-inclusion, which is anti-tokenistic, respectful, reflexive and aware of ethical and power dynamics.
A summary of what has been discovered about Islam in prison, how many Muslim prisoners find the virtuous rehabilitative cycle leading faith, freedom and fraternity in prison, and our plans to assist this process in the future.
While modern slavery and human trafficking (MSHT) are intrinsic problems because of the impact they have on victims, a greater threat emerges from the involvement of organised crime. As with other forms of organised crime, increased law enforcement attention on the tactics employed by criminal groups and the factors that make people vulnerable to recruitment results in new tactics being adopted to avoid detection and disruption. In many countries, particularly where there is demand for outward migration, a worrying trend has emerged where communities, families and victims themselves become complicit in their own recruitment, becoming invested in their own exploitation and subsequently reluctant to seek assistance. This chapter traces the creation of a ‘criminal pyramid scheme’, with criminals at the top driving the recruitment and exploitation of victims, communities and families in the middle, encouraging potential victims to migrate, and victims themselves making up the largest layer, expecting to profit and send their earnings home by exposing themselves to exploitation. Drawing on case study research from key routes into the UK and Europe – from West Africa, the Horn of Africa, Albania and Vietnam – this chapter outlines how this criminal pyramid scheme functions and considers strategies to challenge it.
Social media have opened up new sources of data with the potential to increase our understanding of public opinion on migrants. In this chapter, we examine the discursive representations, in online press and social media, of undocumented immigrants in the British context, between 2015 and 2018. This chapter is based on a study analysing online newspaper articles and corresponding comments published on Facebook using Critical Discourse Analysis. We show that neither online newspaper articles nor their commenters elaborate a nuanced picture of undocumented migration as a complex socioeconomic phenomenon. We identify a shift in media construction, from the undocumented migrant representing a ‘significant enemy’ – during the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015–16 – to becoming a ‘insignificant stranger’ in 2017–18. However, human trafficking never appeared to be explicitly associated with undocumented migration, despite the fact that two phenomena are interlinked. Undocumented migrant are ‘invisible’ individuals at high risk of exploitation, but their vulnerability, and the specific risks of becoming trafficked, were not sufficiently considered by the online British press and the commenters. We suggest that media should reassess their portrayal of undocumented migration and ensure that trafficked migrants are recognised, and assisted, as one of the most vulnerable groups among undocumented migrants.
Describes five key types of Muslim prisoner and tests and then challenges the idea that prisoners mainly choose to follow Islam for reasons of ‘perks, privileges and protection’.
Trauma threatens survivors with its permanent story. When reworked in language only, it can be cut off from the rest of its bodily manifestations. Integrating an embodied story of healing, in a meaningful and transformative way, means accessing multiple tools for recovery. The imagination is one of these tools towards holistic healing. This chapter explores how artistic expression can be used phenomenologically to heal wounds experienced from modern slavery and human trafficking. It will discuss how philosophy can give us language to reconceptualise healing as an experience of embodiment in relationships – drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur. As a Pilates and Somatic practitioner working with survivors of human trafficking and modern slavery, this phenomenological approach has been a particularly helpful methodology to employ in my work. Whereas often trauma discourse can focus on siloed methods for healing trauma, situated in the symptoms of the body, I would argue that a phenomenological engagement with bodily movement, through Pilates and dance in particular, enables the survivor to heal. Healing can occur both through being present to the trauma that survivors continue to suffer in the present, and through reimagining a life beyond the trauma.
The subjects of Islam in prison and the lives of Muslim prisoners have hitherto been shrouded in ignorance and speculation.
Islam in Prison sheds light on this damaging situation. It is a ‘one-stop shop’ which offers a comprehensive and practical account of Islam and Muslims in today’s European prisons to inform criminal justice professionals, journalists, academics and students of criminology and Islamic Studies and prisoners themselves.
Derived from the largest academic study of Muslims in prison to date, with the participation of 279 prisoners and 70 prison staff from ten prisons in England, Switzerland and France, Islam in Prison gives an account of:
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how Muslims come to be in European prisons;
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who Muslims in prison are in socio-demographic and religious terms;
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the reasons why many prisoners choose to follow Islam in prison;
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the types of Muslim prisoner in European prisons;
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how the Worldviews of Mainstream Islam, Islamism and Islamist Extremism shape life in prison;
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the rehabilitative benefits and criminogenic risks of choosing to follow Islam in prison; and
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how Islam and Muslims are managed by prison authorities and the prison chaplaincy.
Thereby, Islam in Prison documents the diverse, hopeful and occasionally harrowing experiences of Muslims in prison and shows how Islam in prison offers significant rehabilitative opportunities, as well as some Islamist risk.
