The School of Geography, Politics and Sociology

Staff Profile

Dr Silvia Pasquetti

Lecturer in Sociology

Background

Background 

Before joining Newcastle in 2015, I was a Research Associate in the Department of Sociology and a Stipendiary Junior Research Fellow (Clare Hall) at the University of Cambridge. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2018-2019 I was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (School of Social Science) in Princeton.

As a political and urban sociologist and ethnographer with a focused interest in forced displacement, I am a member of the Power, Inequalities, and Citizenship research cluster (Sociology) the Power, Space, and Politics research cluster (Geography) and the Military, War, and Security research cluster (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences).

Research

My research interests lie in political sociology, urban sociology, race, migration and forced displacement, law & society, policing and security, humanitarianism, the sociology of emotions, and ethnography. I have published peer-reviewed articles in Theory & Society, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Law & Society Review, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Political Power & Social Theory, International Sociology, and City. I have also published public sociology essays and review essays in British Journal of Sociology, Contexts, and Merip.

I am currently finishing a book out of a decade-long ethnographic fieldwork in the West Bank and urban Israel. This book, titled Together, Apart: Suspect Lives in West Bank Camps and Israeli Cities, is under contract with Oxford University Press. 

Since 2015 I have extended my ethnographic focus from the Middle East to the Mediterranean area with a new project on global displacement and local urban marginalities in peripheral Europe, especially the Italian South. This project tentatively titled Injuries of Refuge: Refugees and Chains of Marginality in an Unequal Europe examines old and new marginalities in the context of  (post)colonial histories of mobility, refugee reception, and border formation. A first publication from this project, titled Into the Emergency Maze: Injuries of Refuge in a Sicilian Town, can be found in The Middle East Report (2016).

I am also co-editor (with Dr Romola Sanyal, LSE Geography) of a book, titled Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge, under contract with Manchester University Press. This book draws on cases from different regions of the world to undertake a critical examination of the shifting mechanisms and unequal paths underpinning the global humanitarian management of displacement.It also offers new theoretical tools for studying different experiential dimensions of displacement (in camps, cities, on the move, in everyday relations with citizens, street-level bureaucrats, civil society actors, etc).

Role and Responsibilities

2016-2017: Co-organizer of the Sociology Seminar Series.

2015-2017: Combined Honours Subject Advisor for Sociology.

 

Research

My research interests lie in political sociology, urban sociology, race, citizenship and displacement, law & society, policing and security, humanitarianism, the sociology of emotions, and ethnography.

My research focuses on four intersecting themes:

1. Structures and experiences of displacement.

2. Emotions and politics in securitized societies.

3. The relationship between law and morality.

4. Militarism, surveillance and urban life.

Along these lines, in my published work, I have addressed the following issues:

- how militarism targeting the built enviroment is negotiated in everyday life along axes such as 'race' and nationhood and with particular attention to the relationship between ruination, affect and spatial stigma (International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, in press).

- how collective emotions relate to--subvert, follow or amplify--histories and structures of control (Law & Society Review 2013).

- how transnational and entrapping processes combine in contexts of forced displacement (Ethnic & Racial Studies 2015).

- how militarism and surveillance are experienced in everyday life at the level of moral-political dispositions (Theory & Society 2015; Political Power and Social Theory 2012).

- how a comparative approach to refugees and the urban poor can problematize fixed assumptions about refugee subjectivities, citizenship, and cities (City 2015, co-edited special issue and solo article).

- how confinement and informality interact-combine or clash-in shaping structures and experiences of urban marginality (International Sociology 2017, co-edited special issue).

My research on issues of displacement, urban militarism, and securitization has mainly been carried out through intensive ethnographic engagement with and across the West Bank and Urban Israel. I am currently finishing a book out of a decade-long ethnographic fieldwork in the West Bank and urban Israel. This book, titled Together, Apart: Suspect Lives in West Bank Camps and Israeli Cities, is under contract with Oxford University Press

Since 2015 I have extended my ethnographic focus to the Mediterranean area with a new project on global displacement and local urban marginalities in peripheral Europe, especially the Italian South. This project tentatively titled Injuries of Refuge: Refugees and Chains of Marginality in an Unequal Europe examines old and new marginalities in the context of  (post)colonial histories of mobility, refugee reception, and border formation. A first publication from this project, titled Into the Emergency Maze: Injuries of Refuge in a Sicilian Town, can be found in The Middle East Report (2016).

I am also co-editor (with Dr Romola Sanyal, LSE Geography) of a book, titled Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge, under contract with Manchester University Press. This book draws on cases from different regions of the world to undertake a critical examination of the shifting mechanisms and unequal paths underpinning the global humanitarian management of displacement. It also offers new theoretical tools for studying different experiential dimensions of displacement (in camps, cities, on the move, in everyday relations with citizens, street-level bureaucrats, civil society actors, etc).
 

Postgraduate Supervision

I would be happy to discuss potential postgraduate supervision with any student interested in working on any of the following topics: surveillance and the security state; humanitarianism and refugees; moral economies of justice; emotions and political action; militarism and the city; urban marginality.

Currently supervising:

Ankita Mukherjee (Newcastle University Research Excellence Academy Funding).Exploring the discriminatory practices and social support networks of the Hijra community: A qualitative study of the 'third gender' in Delhi. Co-supervised with Diane Richardson.

Silvia Maritati (Newcastle University Research Excellence Academy Funding). Asylum, Inequality, and Sense of Place in Peripheral Europe. Co-supervised with Cathrine Degnen.



 

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching:

SOC2085 Refugees and Displacement: Borders, Asylum, and Camps (second year, second semester).

SOC1032 Politics and Society (first year, second semester).

Publications