School of Social & Political Sciences

The School welcomes Dr Gareth Mulvey, Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellow (Sociology), from 1 April 2013.

"I’ve worked on a variety of projects during my research career including a large industrial relations/industrial sociology project on the meaning of work and a number of projects examining various aspects of poverty. I completed my PhD in the department of Government at the University of Strathclyde in 2009 (a public policy analysis of immigration policy under Tony Blair and some of its effects) and have worked as a researcher at Scottish Refugee Council since then. During my time at Scottish Refugee Council I devised a project looking at refugee integration in Scotland. It is this area of work that I will develop during the fellowship at Glasgow University, combining my two main academic interests, public policy and migration.

The plans for my work as part of the fellowship are both conceptual and comparative. I will look to conduct a conceptual interrogation of integration, looking at what it means and whether it is an appropriate term to use when examining a series of complex processes. The larger part of the study will look at national, regional and local policy with regards to migrant integration in 3 or 4 areas of the UK, Glasgow, Cardiff, a large English city and possibly Belfast. Through analysis of policy documents and debates as well as elite interviews, this will look at what policy exists and what it sought to do. Moving beyond policy-making, the effects on migrants will be the main part of the study. It will use surveys, interviews and focus groups to look at the experiences of refugees, migrant worker communities and long term settled BME communities. This will provide comparative analysis of policy and its effects by migrant type and within a number of different policy-making venues. It will therefore engage with debates about public policy and its effects, multiculturalism and centre-periphery relations."

---

First published: 4 April 2013