The first episode of the BBC’s flagship four-part immigration documentary aired on Monday. “Immigration: How British Politics Failed” was produced in consultation with Dr Kathryn Medien, sociology lecturer at the Open University. Here we go…
Medien’s official academic profile says:
“She has interdisciplinary research interests, which centre on the connections between state violence, border regimes, gender, race, and anti-racisms. She is a co-editor of the recent volume Border Abolition Now.”
The book mentioned there was published in July this year and argues: “Borders must be abolished. Borders produce and are produced by carceral, racist, classist, sexist, and xenophobic regimes. Border Abolition Now demands transformative politics to dismantle these systems of oppression.” Naturally it’ll be on all BBC producers’ bookshelves by now…
Her other work includes the papers:
Medien has produced an accompanying interactive game to provide “insight into the various laws that have shaped and determined who is a British citizen,” advertised on the BBC website. The game just talks about how each law on migration harms migrant families…
The sociologist’s consultations may have had some part in the non-politician guests invited to talk on the first episode: David Yelland, Jonathan Portes, and Nazek Ramadan – director of the Migrant Voice organisation. Diane Abbott was invited on too. Who could have guessed…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”