About us
Principle investigator:
Dr. Jing Hiah PhD
Jing Hiah is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Dutch Research Council NWO Rubicon Fellow at the specialist research institute Migration Mobilities Bristol and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies of the University of Bristol.
Jing is trained as a Criminologist (PhD/MSc/BSc) and also has a background in literary studies (BA). Previously she worked as an Assistant professor in Sociology, Theory and Methodology at the Erasmus School of Law and (postdoctoral) researcher at the EU Horizon2020 project ETHOS, Towards a European Theory of Justice at Utrecht University. Jing takes seat in the advisory committee of the Dutch national Fieldlab on exploitation in Domestic work. She is furthermore a member of the Women in Academia steering committee and a member of the Faculty Council at the Erasmus School of Law.
Research interests
How are people able to secure their livelihoods in uncertain and vulnerable social and legal circumstances? And what role do laws and policies play in (re)producing and/or challenging these circumstances? These questions have guided my interdisciplinary research on labour relations, exploitation, migration and inequality. This has brought me to study labour exploitation in migrant businesses in the Netherlands and Romania for my PhD thesis (2019) and the minoritisation and racialisation of vulnerable populations including refugees in various domains including domestic work for the EU Horizon2020 ETHOS Towards a European Theory of Justice. With NeMo I aim to further develop my expertise by studying how people secure their livelihoods in the novel context of domestic labour platforms. My interest in platform labour is guided by the conviction that technology has a crucial role to play in achieving societal prosperity and advancement. However, existing research cautions us that prosperity and social justice for all strata and groups in society is challenged due to drawbacks of digital technologies and its intertwinement with the structures of the globalised economy.
Scientific supervisor:
Professor Bridget Anderson PhD
Bridget Anderson is the Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship. Her post is split between the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies of the University of Bristol.
Bridget has a DPhil in Sociology and previous training in Philosophy and Modern Languages. She is the author of Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (Zed Books, 2000). She co-edited Who Needs Migrant Workers? Labour Shortages, Immigration and Public Policy with Martin Ruhs (Oxford University Press, 2010 and 2012), The Social, Political and Historical Contours of Deportation with Matthew Gibney and Emanuela Paoletti (Springer, 2013) and Migration and Care Labour: Theory, Policy and Politics with Isabel Shutes (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Research interests
Bridget takes as her starting point that the 'migrant' and the 'citizen' and the differences between them are constructed in law and in social and political practice. Research also plays an important role in this, raising important ethical, epistemological and political questions. She is interested in the relation between migration, race, and nation, historically and in the contemporary world. She understands the mobility of people in the context of mobilities of goods, finance and ideas, mobilities whose speed and patterns are significantly changing in the face of technological developments. Her work explores the relations between migration, temporalities and future making claims, with a particular focus on precarity, labour market flexibilities and citizenship rights. She has pioneered an understanding of functions of immigration in essential economic sectors. Bridget has worked closely with migrants' organisations, trades unions and legal practitioners at local, national and international levels.