Critical scholars highlight the deterrent role of racialised and exclusionary bordering practices, shaped by immigration laws, which aim to impede migratory movements. What they often overlook is that borders are not solely constructed to manage the influx of migrants; they are also designed to facilitate the production of ‘cheap labour’. This interdisciplinary research collaboration adopts a dual focus: exploring the legal mechanisms that devalue migrant labour and examining how the racialisation of religion contributes to stigmatising migrants’ lives and work as inherently less valuable. The project is situated at the intersection of law, political theory, and critical migration studies. It seeks to illuminate and challenge the systemic injustices embedded in legal constructions of labour devaluation and stigmatising political discourses within the European regime of border control. 

Leila Faghfouri Azar is a lecturer at PPLE College. She has a background in law, philosophy, and socio-legal theory. Her areas of research and teaching include critical legal theory, human rights law and theory, law and violence, and political theology. In her doctoral dissertation, she conducted a legal-philosophical examination of the structures of exploitation and labour dispossession against undocumented migrants in Europe. 

Dr Anna Blijdenstein teaches at PPLE College. She has a background in political science and philosophy. In 2021, she received her doctorate in philosophy for her dissertation, Liberalism's Dangerous Religions: Enlightenment Legacies in Political Theory. Her research examines the genealogy of religion in liberal thought and explores how this genealogy can inform contemporary political philosophers working on normative questions regarding religion’s place within the liberal state.