Winners of the 8th Border Criminologies Dissertation Prize

We are proud to announce the winners of the eighth Border Criminologies Masters Dissertation/Thesis Prize, who will receive £200 and £100 worth of Routledge books. 

Border Criminologies seeks to support early career researchers working on the intersections between border control and criminal justice. From a strong list  entries, the competition panel, consisting of academics from the Border Criminologies Network identified the following winners:

Lucia Messent, winner. "Identifying child ‘slaves’: How the intertwining of modern slavery, immigration and criminal justice shapes the experiences of children in the UK’s National Referral Mechanism"

Lucia recently graduated with an MSc in Public Policy from the University of Bristol and has an international English Literature BA from the University of Leeds, having spent a year of her degree in Canada. While completing her master’s, she worked for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, where she contributed to research on human trafficking and modern slavery and supported international advocacy through the Commonwealth 8.7 Network, a global coalition of over 100 anti-trafficking organisations. In her current role as the Policy Officer for Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Lucia works with parliamentarians and party members to inform, engage, and advise them on issued relating to Palestine and the Palestinian cause.

The UK National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the government framework for identifying ‘victims’ of ‘modern slavery and human trafficking’ and helping them access support. This dissertation offers a critical analysis of the framework as it operates in relation to children. I situate the NRM in the context of critical scholarship, which reveals how the construction of modern slavery as a problem of immigration and ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking is used to extend the controls already exerted on foreign nationals and non-white, working-class British children under oppressive immigration and criminal justice procedures. I argue that these patterns are reflected in the NRM, which priorities immigration and crime control over victim protection and interacts with immigration and criminal justice frameworks to inflict a constellation of harms on children referred to the framework. Through qualitative interviews with child protection practitioners, I find that NRM delays prolong children’s experiences of oppressive asylum and criminal justice procedures. At the same time, the confusing relationship between NRM, asylum and criminal justice outcomes results in inconsistent and potentially harmful outcomes, leaving children at risk of being excluded from protection under all three frameworks. The NRM’s close entanglement with immigration and law enforcement also makes children resistant to engage with the framework, owing to justified concerns about their data being used for ulterior immigration and crime control agendas.

Rachael Pop, runner up. "Childhood Statelessness in European Courts: An Avoidable Crisis"

Rachael Pop is a human rights attorney with legal experience spanning refugee protection, asylum law, and international advocacy. Currently based in Bucharest, she supports NGOs as a consultant. Previously, she led projects at Bloomberg Law and practiced at Dorsey & Whitney LLP. Rachael holds advanced degrees in Law (J.D., LL.M) and Refugee Protection (MA), and is admitted to the New York Bar and the Minnesota Bar.

In the face of claims that statelessness is an avoidable tragedy, millions still suffer from the deprivation of a nationality. Through no fault of their own, the children among these millions often are born into statelessness and thus a life of instability. Even though all European states have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which mandates immediate birth registration and the right to acquire a nationality, childhood statelessness persists as a problem in Europe. One means of confronting the human rights violations resulting from childhood statelessness is through litigation. Through interviews with legal experts and an analysis of 44 childhood statelessness cases from national and international European venues, this dissertation explored how certain elements of litigation may affect case outcome. The data suggests that the specifics of litigant choice, the availability of guardians for children, and the legal context of the jurisdiction were impactful factors to consider. More specifically, to respect a child’s best interests, children’s claims should be addressed separately from all other litigants, including their parents. To further protect stateless children throughout the litigation process, they should receive a special guardian dedicated to procedural guidance and educating the court about their best interests, akin to those provided to children in most family courts. Finally, a state’s failure to incorporate the CRC and incorporate/ratify the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness serves as an unnecessary barrier to nationality for stateless children and forces advocates to rely on more binding law that does not directly address childhood statelessness. Through targeted efforts lobbying for domestication of these treaties, respecting the individual claims of each child, and fighting for guardians at the onset of litigation, stateless children’s chances of success may be heightened.