Migrants with Irregular Status in Europe: Evolving Conceptual and Policy Challenges

Sarah Spencer is Director of Strategy and a Senior Fellow at COMPAS and was Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity from its inception in 2014 until March 2019. She is Chair of the Board of Directors of IMISCOE, the European network of migration research institutes and scholars, and a member of Kellogg College, Oxford’s largest and most international graduate college. Sarah’s research interests focus on irregular migrants, on which she has been PI in projects on national and city responses to irregular migrants in Europe, initiated under an Open Society Fellowship, and on families with No Recourse to Public Funds in the UK; on integration (on which she is collaborating with Katharine Charsley, University of Bristol), human rights and equality issues, and on the policy making process. Sarah was awarded her doctorate at Erasmus University Rotterdam, has an MPhil from University College London and took her first degree at the University of Nottingham. At the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, Sarah is responsible for the City Initiative on Migrants with Irregular Status in Europe (C-MISE); and for Oxford’s contribution to the Urban Innovative Action project in Utrecht, the Refugee Launchpad. She was Director of its Autumn Academy symposium from 2016-2018 and responsible for its award-winning online tool to assess the eligibility of migrant families for local authority support. Sarah was a co-founder of the network of equality and human rights organisations in Britain, the Equality and Diversity Forum (now ‘Equally Ours’) and its Chair for ten years (2002-2012); a Commissioner and Deputy Chair (2003-2005) of a statutory body, the Commission for Racial Equality; Programme Director at the Institute for Public Policy Research (1990-2003); and Director of the human rights NGO, Liberty (1984-1989). She has twice been seconded into the Cabinet Office strategy unit to contribute to studies on migration policy and has been a member of government Taskforces and advisory bodies. In 2007 she received a CBE for services to equality and human rights.

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