“The reason why Israel is suddenly recognising Somaliland, which has been a breakaway region for decades, is because they and the US are working on a plan to forcibly relocate Palestinians from Gaza to there-despite the risk to regional security” Julia McFarlane BBCNews apnews.com/article/isra...

Time and again - during war, pandemics, or wildfires - governments express gratitude towards migrants keeping citizens safe, and then a year later begin deporting them. These policies, we’ve found in our research, are wildly unpopular. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/u...

This researcher claims pro-immigrant researchers cherry pick evidence to reach conclusions, but doesn’t mention that the PNAS article he cites shows NO bias. Only a second one does. So he cherry picks evidence to show researchers cherry pick evidence! laurenzguenther.substack.com/p/why-immigr...

Really looking forward to @naomiaklein.bsky.social’s forthcoming book, but was surprised to see that you can’t *not* consent to cookies on her website, with only “accept” as an option. That’s contrary to UK law, and also seems inconsistent with Klein’s principles!

Slides from a Home Office presentation for employers on “earned settlement” — note the case studies: they explicitly play the “good migrant” versus “bad migrant” narrative. Guess which category Sarah, the American, is placed in?

Why do people use words like “remigration” and not deportation? Maybe because “remigration” is very abstract. It can refer to migrants voluntarily leaving OR violent deportations, and so claiming most people support “remigration” seems plausible, while still used to justify violent deportations.

alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/immigratio.. @akoustov.bsky.social defends looking at the effects of immigration policies, not immigration itself. I think we can say something similar about public opinion: don’t ask people which immigrants they like. Ask them which immigration policies they like.

This is an excellent thread about varieties of eugenicist thought and why we should worry about so-called "positive" benefits. Biology educators & psychologists have noted the way we (often) teach genetics seems to "cause" more essentialist thinking so one may imagine www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

There’s some useful info here, but also some misleading statements, such as the statement that focusing on small boats could be justified due to asylum seekers making up 10% of all migrants - the article fails to clarify that the vast majority of asylum seekers don’t arrive on small boats!

This looks like a great opportunity for someone interested in doing a PhD related to autonomy. Essex has an excellent group of political and moral philosophers. www.essex.ac.uk/postgraduate...

Great article by @kkale.bsky.social defending having elections everyday: everyday you vote for your preferred candidate/party, with winners determined by counting up all votes after a given cycle. So no more elections resulting from whatever happens to be in the news right before election day.

Shameless self-publicity. My new book "Why Immigration Policy Is Hard And How To Make It Better" is out. www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Note that she was *legally* overstaying her visa, as far as I understand, because this is allowed while waiting the outcome of a green card application.

Larry Summers: maybe women in academia aren’t as successful because of genetics. Also Larry Summers: I think I’ll stop mentoring this female economist unless she has sex with me. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

The weird jewellery policy, first in Denmark, is back! I wonder why these kind if strange policies are proposed. Any ideas? One possibility: they distract people from other unpopular policies, or make other unpopular policies seem relatively more reasonable. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

You might think that, if you increase the minimum wage, then this won’t affect workers in the informal economy. It might even decrease their wages. This article shows that minimum wages are associated with an increase in informal workers’ wages.

The US actually has a dearth of public toilets precisely because of previous policies banning paid public toilets, as this excellent @planetmoney.bsky.social episode discusses. www.npr.org/2025/05/02/1....

The Home Office initially decides whether an asylum seeker is a child by just having two members of staff “look at the child and decide whether, based on their appearance and demeanour, they think that they could be a child.”

So you should really watch this. Just 2 minutes. But a window into the truly radical nature of the people Trump is nominating. When pressed today, the nominee to be Ambassador to South Africa refuses to oppose reinstituting laws to prevent black people from voting in America.

“Using administrative student data from New York City, we…find the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and reading achievement, raising obvious questions about validity.” www.nber.org/papers/w26480

But it’s ok because everyone clapped for these nurses four years ago.

When I meet someone with ILR who can afford to apply for citizenship but doesn’t, I tell them “apply if you can!” But many people can’t: it’s too the expensive. Those people would be eligible for deportation under the Tories even if they had lived in the country for over a decade.

A rule of thumb: if people are willing to assume significant risks to cross the channel, they probably are fleeing significant risks in France, and a non-insignificant number will try to recross the channel again if sent back to France. Any one-in-one-out policy must depend on France being safe.

🚨 Job Alert 🚨 Our group (@bethewhitaker.bsky.social, @akoustov.bsky.social, Michael Ewers) is hiring a postdoc for a project on long-term environmental changes, shorter-term shocks (conflicts, disasters, economic disruptions), and migration. Details right here: jobs.charlotte.edu/postings/64603

Opposition to ICE violence is consistent with studies conducted over the years: people opposing immigration still oppose very violent enforcement. They oppose violent enforcement even when it’s necessary to force migrants to leave. See our studies here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

In this article, we asked a representative sample of Syrian refugees in Lebanon whether they wished to repatriate, remain, or resettle. Most did not went to resettle. We then asked them to imagine that resettlement was actually possible, and the number preferring resettlement dramatically increased.

My book, 'Anywhere But Here', is finished! It will take you inside the Home Office and behind the scenes of the small boats crisis for the first time. You can pre-order from Waterstones: bit.ly/4gBxHTV Foyles: tinyurl.com/3n7p3w3h Amazon: amzn.to/3XuF7Q8

The article states “The Conservatives say they would task officials with removing 750,000 illegal immigrants.” This is inaccurate: the plan would include migrants *legally* in the country, because it is legal for refugees to enter to claim asylum without first getting a visa.

Am I missing something, or does Reform’s plan sound more pro-immigrant than Labour? Though Reform says immigrants won’t get ILR and need to reapply for a new visa after 5 years, they’ll still be eligible for citizenship after 5 years AND won’t need to volunteer to get it - unlike with Labour.

Prisoners (including those not arrested under terrorism charges) now have their keffiyas confiscated because keffiyas are considered “branding associated with the Palestine Action Group.” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

@ianleslie.bsky.social claims anti-immigrant attitudes arose from the size and velocity of a “post-pandemic (and post-Brexit) surge in immigration.” But the surge began *during* the pandemic, more because of new health and care workers than anything else - workers wildly popular amongst voters.

Do any philosophers have experience creating their own index, and/or hired a good indexer they can recommend?

David Yambio, President of Refugees in Libya and victim of EU-funded abuses: "We, Refugees in Libya and I, personally, have been abducted with the boats you financed. We have been held in arbitrary detention in the prisons you have supported. We have been tortured by the militias you have trained.”

I think I neglected to share the link to the published version of my paper The Value of Ceremonies (open access) which was my Presidential Address for @triphilosophy.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

When I went to the academia/, .edu site to delete my account, I noticed twelve AI podcasts about my articles posted on my profile without my knowledge or consent. Now they can create AI versions of users for whatever they want, sold to whoever they want, anywhere they want, for as long as they want.

An excellent defence by @akoustov.bsky.social of a policy where private citizens can use their own money to bring over and support refugees, who are given permanent residency on arrival or later. In the US this is supported by even most Republicans. alexanderkustov.substack.com/p/why-dont-y...

In Denmark, if you’re pregnant and the government thinks you will be a bad parent because you were abused as a child, they can give you a test asking “what’s glass made of?” and “what’s the big staircase in Rome called?”If you fail they take your baby after birth. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

I’ll also be making “up to” 30 billion this year.

I’m not sure this is true. When I was in 2nd grade I was introduced to the Holocaust at my Orthodox Jewish school, and the brilliant teacher began by talking about very poor Germans looking for scapegoats. Economic deprivation feeds on racism, and the wealthy who don’t want to help find scapegoats.

The man with five houses who says there aren’t enough houses because of asylum seekers in hotels is also the man with two ex-wives who says men marrying women have more stable relationships.

Lots of people say offensive things when they’re young, and maybe they can change. If they change they say things like “I acted wrongly. I’m sorry” and not “it is chilling that a conversation from nearly a decade ago can do this sort of damage.” www.itv.com/news/2025-09...

Excellent point: The Home Office seems to believe not initially granting asylum deters more people from arriving, but it just increases the number who appeal, increasing the appeals backlog, forcing more genuine refugees to live in hotels for longer rather than being able to work.

The reporters tell us they interviewed dozens of anti-immigrant protesters and “also…asylum seekers.” By the end the article finally states only two asylum seekers were interviewed, who only say asylum seekers shouldn’t commit crimes. Thanks for the balanced view BBC. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

If you’re a PhD student working on politics, philosophy and/or economics, consider applying for the KCL PPE grad conference! The form can be found here: forms.office.com/e/ZC0MXYhMVk

In the UK there were huge efforts put into exposing anti-semitism in left Labour, and virtually *no* efforts to expose anti-semitism amongst Conservatives. Even the Guardian ignored the problem, leading to past Conservative wins. I’m glad at least anti-semitism amongst Reform is getting attention.

It’s worth noting that the CDC decision is the same as UK NHS policy, which doesn’t recommend covid vaccines for pregnant women, something not noted in articles covering this in the US. The difference, of course, is that the UK decision is made with evidence by specialists, and not anti-vaxxers.

I cannot emphasise, based on polls I’ve conducted with colleagues, how *incredibly* unpopular deporting firefighters is. It’s unpopular across the political spectrum. In some ways that’s stupid - lots of people contribute besides firefighters - but this shows how out-of-touch the policy is.

An excellent point by @zoejardiniere.bsky.social: the asylum seekers in hotels are here legally - that’s why they are given accommodation if they need it - yet they can’t legally work, contrary to what most UK citizens want. That’s one reason they can’t pay for their own accommodation.

Just heard latest Maintenance Phase from @yrfatfriend.bsky.social and @michaelhobbes.bsky.social. It was great, but at one point they make fun of people who don’t touch receipts; I thought handling receipts was legit risky? Would be cool to hear an episode on BPS. preventcancer.org/article/pape...

This by @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social is essential for anyone wanting the real story of Britain's asylum system and the shameful way the UK now treats the desperate people seeking refuge here. I'll be talking to Nicola about her book on Sept 16. Subscribe here for an invite www.adambienkov.co.uk