Laura Cleton is a postdoctoral researcher in return migration governance in Europe. At UNU-MERIT, she investigates the involvement of diaspora in capacity building and development through temporary return programs, facilitated by the International Organization for Migration. She investigates whether and how such programs enable the transfer of skills and knowledge to diaspora members’ countries of nationality. It not only questions what this process looks like and what (enduring) effects it has, but also challenges the underlying assumptions and discourses embedded in diaspora engagement for development.
Her dissertation entitled Deporting Children. Policy Framing, Legitimation and Intersectional Boundary Work (2022, Department of Political Science at University of Antwerp) relied on critical migration and border studies, intersectionality and interpretative policy analysis to question how the Dutch and Belgian authorities legitimize the deportation of undocumented migrant children. It argued that they do so through a conscious attempt to (re)frame the policy problem at hand, by deliberately drawing attention away from the underlying moral-political conflict and the hardships deportation poses for children. Instead, they on the one hand emphasized the diligence of their procedures and their compassionate way of working, while on the other also directing attention to the potential danger that children and their family pose to the citizenry. The dissertation complicates scholarly understanding of the workings of securitization and humanitarianism as means to legitimate migration control, and points to the crucial importance of intersectionality and interpretative policy analysis to deportation studies.
Prior to starting her postdoc and PhD, she worked as a junior lecturer in Interdisciplinary Social Sciences (University of Amsterdam) and a junior researcher in Social Geography (Utrecht University). She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, steering board member for IMISCOE's Gender & Sexuality in Migration Research Standing Group, and acts as the secretary of the Dutch Association for Migration Research (DAMR). Her research interests include migration governance, migration policies & politics, voluntary and forced return migration, gendered & feminist approaches to migration studies, and family migration.
| Migration Reasearch Hub ID: 82 | |
| ORCID | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7746-352 |
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-cleton-1ba46891/ | |
| X/Twitter | https://twitter.com/@LauraCletonr |
| ResearchGate | https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laura_Cleton |
Expertise
Migration processes
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Migration drivers
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Migration forms
Migration consequences (for migrants, sending and receiving countries)
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Socio-cultural consequences
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Transversal consequences
Migration governance
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Governance actors
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Immigrant policy and law
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Migration policy and law
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Governance processes
Cross-cutting topics in migration research
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Migration research and theory
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Transversal themes
Disciplines
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Disciplines
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Subject Areas
Methods
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Qualitative research
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Types of study
Geographies
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Scope
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UN Countries
Roles
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UNU-MERIT & Maastricht University
University, Maastricht, Netherlands
Postdoctoral Researcher
Research
Performing freedom in the Dutch deportation regime: bureaucratic persuasion and the enforcement of ‘voluntary return’
| Authors | Laura Cleton, Sébastien Chauvin |
| Year | 2019 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
Suggested Research
“We have nothing to hide”: Legitimacy narratives, researcher positionality and the ethics of accessing the Dutch deportation apparatus
| Authors | Laura Cleton |
| Year | 2022 |
| Journal Name | International Migration |
| Citations (WoS) | 4 |
Goodman, Adam. 2020. The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants. Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford. 322 pp.
| Authors | Laura Cleton |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | International Migration |
The time politics of migrant deportability: an intersectional analysis of deportation policy for non-citizen children in Belgium and the Netherlands
| Authors | Laura Cleton |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
Intersectional migration research: Re‐centring governance structures
| Authors | Laura Cleton, Laura Cleton, Sarah Scuzzarello, ... |
| Year | 2024 |
| Journal Name | International Migration |
| Citations (WoS) | 4 |
‘Our aim is to assist migrants in making a well-informed decision’: how return counsellors in Austria and the Netherlands manage the aspirations of unwanted non-citizens
| Authors | Laura Cleton, Reinhard Schweitzer |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
Contesting policy categories using intersectionality: reflections for studying migration governance
| Authors | Laura Cleton, Petra Meier |
| Year | 2023 |
| Journal Name | Ethnic and Racial Studies |
Determinants of Enforced Return: A Quantitative Analysis of the Spectrum of (In)voluntariness Among Rejected Asylum Seekers in the Netherlands
| Authors | Michael Sinnige, Laura Cleton, Arjen Leerkes |
| Year | 2025 |
| Journal Name | Population, Space and Place |
Legitimising detention and deportation of illegalised migrant families: reconstructing public controversies in Belgium and the Netherlands
| Authors | Nathan Wittock, Laura Cleton, Robin Vandevoordt, ... |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |