Adrienne Pine's Blog, Siobhan McGuirk's Blog, Watch

Siobhan McGuirk on LEFT/OVER Episode 18. – Speaking Asylum

LEFT OVER Podcast
June 4th, 2021

This week we’re joined by film-maker and anthropologist, Siobhán McGuirk, to talk about the proposals to overhaul the UK asylum system, and how these aren’t evils unique to Priti Patel. We talk about the construction of who and what a migrant is, even from supposed arbiters of accountability like the United Nations, how this construction hurts asylum seekers and the most vulnerable, and why we must be abolitionists when it comes to borders.

/// SHOW NOTES ///

/// CREDITS /// Hosts: Aarjan /// Nikita
Guest: Siobhán McGuirk Production: Sarah Sahim
Music: Cardio /// Parapar feat. Moushumi Bhowmik, Oliver Weeks, Ben Heartland and Rosalind Acton – Jessore Road


Adrienne Pine is a critical medical anthropologist whose work has explored the embodiment of structural violence and imperialism in Honduras, cross-cultural approaches to revolutionary nursing, and neoliberal fascism. She has served as an expert country conditions witness in around 100 asylum cases over the past fifteen years. Adrienne is an assistant professor at the American University and author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras

Siobhán McGuirk is an anthropologist, journalist, curator, and filmmaker whose work focuses on gender and sexuality in the context of migration and the affective impacts of social justice organizing. She is a postdoctoral early career researcher at Goldsmiths University of London and is a member of the editorial collective of Red Pepper magazine.


Check out Adrienne Pine and Siobhán McGuirk’s & new book:

Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry