Nicola
Mai
My research straddles criminology sociology and anthropology and focuses on the experiences and representations of criminalised marginalised and stigmatised migrant groups.
My work is qualitative and based on an ethnographic long term engagement with the people and communities with whom I undertake my research.
I am also a filmmaker and my films complement my academic writing and emerge through the collaboration with migrants and sex workers and by expressing their perspectives priorities and needs.
I believe collaborative filmmaking is a way to create knowledge together with people who are directly concerned and to make sure that they own the terms of their representations.
My ambition is that the films and publications that result from my work will reach out further from the academic world into public and political debates and that they will contribute to changing policies according to the priorities and needs of their protagonists.
In the future I would like to continue my work on migration by focusing on the relationship with climate change the transition to green societies and the displacements and mobilities that are emerging in the process.
Before coming to Leicester in 2021 I worked for a year as Professor of Sociology at the University of Newcastle in Australia.
Between 2015 and 2020 I worked as Professor of Sociology and Migration Studies at Kingston University London where I delivered SEXHUM (www.sexhum.org) a four-year (2016-2020) ERC-funded project on migrant sex workers’ understandings and experiences of agency and exploitation in Australia France New Zealand and the US.
Before then I worked for ten years for London Metropolitan University where between 2008 and 2010 I directed the 'Migrant Workers in the UK Sex Industry' ESRC project which produced 100 qualitative interviews and found that only a minority of people were trafficked.
Between 2006 and 2008 I delivered together with the other members of the research team the ‘Rhythms and Realities of Everyday Life' flagship project of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Immigration and Inclusion programme focusing on the relationship between long-term residents and new arrivals in six sites across the UK.
| Migration Reasearch Hub ID: 2881 | |
| ORCID | https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6073-0820 |
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-mai-6966342b/ | |
| X/Twitter | https://twitter.com/NickMaiNormal |
| Researcher ID | https://le.ac.uk/people/nick-mai |
| ResearchGate | https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicola-Mai |
Expertise
Migration processes
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Migration drivers
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Migration forms
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Migration infrastructures
Migration consequences (for migrants, sending and receiving countries)
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Socio-cultural consequences
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Socio-economic consequences
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Transversal consequences
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Legal-political 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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Other
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Qualitative research
Geographies
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Scope
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Non-UN Territories
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UN Countries
Roles
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The University of Leicester
University, Leicester, United Kingdom
Professor of Criminology -
Kingston University
University, Kingston-Upon-Thames, United Kingdom
Professor of Sociology and Migration Studies -
London Metropolitan University
University, London, United Kingdom
Professor of Sociology and Migration Studies -
University of Leicester
University, Leicester, United Kingdom
Professor of Criminology -
The University of Newcastle
University, Callaghan, Australia
Professor of Sociology
Research
Unfinished Decriminalization: The Impact of Section 19 of the Prostitution Reform Act 2003 on Migrant Sex Workers' Rights and Lives in Aotearoa New Zealand
| Authors | Calum Bennachie, Annah Pickering, Jenny Lee, ... |
| Year | 2021 |
| Citations (WoS) | 5 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Migration, sex work and trafficking: the racialized bordering politics of sexual humanitarianism
| Authors | Nicola Mai, P.G. Macioti, Calum Bennachie, ... |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | Ethnic and Racial Studies |
Framing the Mother Tac: The Racialised, Sexualised and Gendered Politics of Modern Slavery in Australia
| Authors | P. G. Macioti, Eurydice Aroney, Calum Bennachie, ... |
| Year | 2020 |
| Journal Name | SOCIAL SCIENCES-BASEL |
| Citations (WoS) | 5 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Transgender People and Human Trafficking: Intersectional Exclusion of Transgender Migrants and People of Color from Anti-trafficking Protection in the United States
| Authors | Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Jennifer Musto, Heidi Hoefinger, ... |
| Year | 2020 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Human Trafficking | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Community-Based Responses to Negative Health Impacts of Sexual Humanitarian Anti-Trafficking Policies and the Criminalization of Sex Work and Migration in the US
| Authors | Heidi Hoefinger, Jennifer Musto, P. G. Macioti, ... |
| Year | 2020 |
| Citations (WoS) | 22 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Mobile orientations: An autoethnography of Tunisian professional boyfriends
| Authors | Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2017 |
| Journal Name | Sexualities | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
‘Too Much Suffering’: Understanding the Interplay between Migration, Bounded Exploitation and Trafficking through Nigerian Sex Workers’ Experiences
| Authors | Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2016 |
| Journal Name | Sociological Research Online | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Editorial: Trafficking (in) Representations: Understanding the recurring appeal of victimhood and slavery in neoliberal times
| Authors | Rutvica Andrijasevic, Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2016 |
| Journal Name | Anti-Trafficking Review | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Migration and Social Cohesion: Appraising the Resilience of Place in London
| Authors | Mary J Hickman, Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2015 |
| Journal Name | Population, Space and Place |
| Citations (WoS) | 5 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
“The antiAtlas of Borders, A Manifesto”
| Authors | Cédric Parizot, Anne Laure Amilhat Szary, Gabriel Popescu, ... |
| Year | 2014 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Borderlands Studies |
Embodied cosmopolitanisms: the subjective mobility of migrants working in the global sex industry
| Authors | Nick Mai |
| Year | 2013 |
| Journal Name | Gender, Place & Culture | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
The fractal queerness of non-heteronormative migrants working in the UK sex industry
| Authors | Nick Mai |
| Year | 2012 |
| Journal Name | Sexualities | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Tampering with the Sex of ‘Angels’: Migrant Male Minors and Young Adults Selling Sex in the EU
| Authors | Nick Mai |
| Year | 2011 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 19 |
Italophilia meets Albanophobia: paradoxes of asymmetric assimilation and identity processes among Albanian immigrants in Italy
| Authors | Russell King, Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2009 |
| Journal Name | Ethnic and Racial Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 25 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Love, Sexuality and Migration: Mapping the Issue(s)
| Authors | Nicola Mai, Russell King |
| Year | 2009 |
| Journal Name | Mobilities |
| Citations (WoS) | 92 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Between Minor and Errant Mobility: The Relation Between Psychological Dynamics and Migration Patterns of Young Men Selling Sex in the EU
| Authors | Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2009 |
| Journal Name | Mobilities |
| Citations (WoS) | 14 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
‘Turks’ in the UK: Problems of Definition and the Partial Relevance of Policy
| Authors | Russell King, Mark Thomson, Nicola Mai, ... |
| Year | 2008 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Gendering migration and remittances: evidence from London and northern Albania
| Authors | Russell King, Mirela Dalipaj, Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2006 |
| Journal Name | Population, Space and Place |
| Citations (WoS) | 63 |
The Albanian Diaspora-in-the-Making: Media, Migration and Social Exclusion
| Authors | Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2005 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 18 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Albanian immigrants in Lecce and Modena: narratives of rejection, survival and integration
| Authors | Russell King, Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2004 |
| Journal Name | Population, Space and Place | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: migration dynamics, strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism
| Authors | Nicola Mai |
| Year | 2003 |
| Journal Name | Modern Italy | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Albanian migration and new transnationalisms
| Authors | Nicola Mai, Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers |
| Year | 2003 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 22 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
The politicisation of migrant minors: Italo-Romanian geopolitics and EU integration
| Authors | Nick Mai |
| Year | 2010 |
| Journal Name | Area | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Suggested Research
Anti-Trafficking in the Time of FOSTA/SESTA: Networked Moral Gentrification and Sexual Humanitarian Creep
| Authors | Jennifer Musto, Anne E. Fehrenbacher, Heidi Hoefinger, ... |
| Year | 2021 |
| Journal Name | SOCIAL SCIENCES-BASEL |
| Citations (WoS) | 18 | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |