Hostile Environments and Hospitable Praxes

University of Kent, 23rd – 24th June 2025

‘Laws try to rationalise the border regime which fundamentally ignores the humanity of those who move. Knowing this, let’s take as our root and starting position the reality that no human is illegal.’

—Leah Cowan, Border Nation: A Story of Migration

The rhetorical and legal framework of the Hostile Environment has been long in the making. Long-standing colonial paradigms shore up a particular vision of British citizenship and draw lines as to who has a right to cross Britain’s borders and access its resources. In the twenty-first century, Britain positions itself, as it long has, as that ‘small island’ embattling to retain its place and status—to preserve its sovereignty and relevance as a global power in the aftermath of its devolved Commonwealth and Empire. It does so at the expense and exclusion of those it deems not British, or not British enough. It does so via an ethos and praxis of hostility.

In this context, immigration is a major political talking point, and is often used to distract attention from other, far more influential, causes of domestic tensions and inequities. Within a praxis of hostility, politicians speak of ‘illegal’ migration, at the expense of international human rights laws; right-wing pundits and politicians stir up populist and hate speech; and the press prints news of humanitarian disaster with no humanity, people drowned at sea mere statistics. Border control in the UK, and within the conglomerate of the ‘Global North’, is exercised with the same securitising, surveillance, and military strategies borne from earlier colonial ventures and machinations and carried out in contemporary global wars and conflicts.

This two-day conference brings together academics and practitioners from across disciplines to present on, discuss, and engage with the topic of the Hostile Environment, both in the UK, and further afield, and to consider the relationship that present-day migration politics has with the history and legacies of empire. What potential do literary and cultural responses to migratory and racial politics have, to devise possible routes towards long-term, actionable hospitable praxes?

The conference features a poetry reading by Loraine Masiya Mponela, keynote presentations by Leah Cowan and Agnes Woolley, and a film screening of Encounter, a collaborative documentary on PROJEKT ENCOUNTER, with the School of Arts, University of Kent.

To register to attend, please contact r.gregory-fox@kent.ac.uk by 2nd June 2025.

This conference is organised by Rachel Gregory Fox, a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Kent. The organisation of this conference is generously supported with funding provided by the Leverhulme Trust.