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. I am a former Fulbright scholar.

I am an interdisciplinary scholar and ethnographer working at the intersection of law and society scholarship, urban studies, political sociology, and race and ethnicity. I have a focused interest in the study of forced displacement in comparative and global perspective and in connection to histories and structures of militarism, race, coloniality, and urban marginality.
 

At Newcastle University 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).


I am currently the DPD for the MA in Sociology and Social Research and the MA in Sociology.


Latest Publications

Pasquetti, Silvia; Sanyal, Romola. (Eds) 2020. Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Pasquetti, Silvia; Casati, Noemi; Sanyal, Romola. 2019. "Law and Refugee Crises. Annual Review of Law and Social Science vol. 15, October, 289-310.

Pasquetti, Silvia. 2019. "Experiences of Urban Militarism: Spatial Stigma, Ruins, and Everyday Life." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 43, 5: 848-869.




 

Research

Research

I am an interdisciplinary scholar and ethnographer working at the intersection of law and society scholarship, urban studies, political sociology, and race and ethnicity. I have a focused interest in the study of forced displacement in comparative and global perspective and in connection to histories and structures of securitization, militarism, race, marginality, and coloniality.

My research focuses on four intersecting themes:

1. Experiences of forced displacement.

2. Political emotions in response to surveillance, militarism, and humanitarianism.

3. The relationship between law and moralities of justice.

4. Urban marginality, poverty, and social encounters across difference.

My research interests lie in political sociology, urban sociology, migration and forced displacement, law & society, race and ethnicity, 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, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 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 multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in Palestinian refugee camps and segregated districts across the West Bank and urban Israel. This book, titled Together, Apart: Palestinian Refugee and Urban Marginalities across Borders of Control is under contract with Oxford University Press for the series on Global and Comparative Ethnography.

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 examines old and new marginalities in the context of  (post)colonial histories of mobility, urban marginality, border formation, and refugee reception. 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, published with Manchester University Press (June 2020). 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, the state, and the city; urban marginality, the sociology of Palestinians, law, violence, and moralities of justice.

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 Prof Diane Richardson.

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



 

Teaching

I am the module leader for SOC2085 Refugees and Displacement (undergraduate module, 2nd semester of 2nd year)

I teach on SOC1032 Politics & Society (undergraduate module, 2nd semester of 1st year)

Publications