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Lauren Cape-Davenhill

Lauren Cape-Davenhill

Profile

After completing my MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies, I spent eight years working in migrant support and advocacy organisations including the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group (Crawley, UK), Medicins Sans Frontieres (Athens, Greece) and Right to Remain (Manchester, UK). My professional background informs my interest in the securitisation and criminalisation of migration, and the racialised dynamics of immigration enforcement. 

Publications

Boochani, B. et al. (2020). Transnational communities for dismantling detention: From Manus Island to the UK. CPGP, 6(1): 108-128.

Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group (2015). Cutting Justice: The impacts of legal aid cuts for people detained in Brook House and Tinsley House Immigration Removal Centres. This project assessed the impacts of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment Offenders Act (LASPO) 2012 on people detained under immigration powers by Gatwick Airport. The project adopted a mixed methods approach, undertaking telephone surveys with over 100 detainees, and in-depth qualitative interviews with nine detainees. I was lead researcher on this project, supported by Professor Michael Collyer at the University of Sussex in an advisory role.

Research interests

My research interests include the intersections between the criminal justice and immigration systems, bordering, securitization, and the racialised dynamics of border controls. I take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing particularly on work from critical human geography, criminology, migration studies and sociology. I am interested in exploring ways by which my research and position as a researcher can support the activities of migrant support and advocacy organisations.

My current PhD project explores Foreign National Offender (FNO) deportability in the UK. I aim to explore the changing parameters of FNO deportability, and the post-sentence trajectories of FNOs in the UK, including experiences of community-based controls such as electronic monitoring and reporting requirements. This research is supported by ESRC, and sits within the Security, Conflict and Justice Pathway of the White Rose Doctoral Training Partnership.

Qualifications

  • MA Social Research Methods (Interdisciplinary), University of Leeds, 2019-20
  • MA Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2010-12
  • BSocSc Politics and International Relations, University of Manchester, 2007-10