Staff profile

I am an urban and political geographer interested in the politics and ethics of migration and its relationship with the urban. I joined the Department of Geography in 2018 following a Senior Lectureship at the University of Manchester. Prior to this, I worked at the University of St Andrews as a Teaching Fellow in Geography following a BA, MA and PhD in Geography from Durham University. During my time at Durham, I have undertaken a range of administrative roles, including Deputy Director of Education and currently Director of the BA Programme. I occasionally tweet at: @Jonny_Darling

I have a broad range of research interests, primarily orientated around the politics of asylum and refuge. My work has been funded by the AHRC, British Academy, ESRC, Leverhulme Trust, and the European Commission. My current work seeks to explore:

1. The urbanisation of asylum. My work has been underpinned by a desire to understand how cities respond to forced migration. My work has theorised the urban as both a means to police, manage, and regulate the lives of refugees, and simultaneously as a complex social formation through which political acts, claims, and subjectivities are forged. In this field, I have also examined the emergence, development, and tactics of urban sanctuary movements, culminating in the co-edited collection Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles.

2. Asylum accommodation and support. I am interested in the structures of accommodation, support, dispersal and resettlement that surround asylum policy in the UK and across Europe. My work has explored the forms of distributed violence that surround asylum accommodation, leading to the book Systems of Suffering: Dispersal and the Denial of Asylum, and alongside colleagues in Australia and Switzerland I am currently examining the use of hotels as forms of contingent and carceral accommodation.

3. Intimate practices of care, hospitality, and solidarity. My past work has explored spaces of care such as drop-in centres and asylum support services, in order to examine the political potentials of radical caring practices. My current work, funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Grant, focuses on forms of intimate solidarity and hospitality in refugee hosting programmes across the UK.

Beyond these research interests, I have a longstanding interest in pedagogy and geographical education. I am a co-editor of Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students, the first textbook within the discipline to offer a detailed account of research ethics within geography. I have also co-produced a range of open access teaching resources on precarious housing in Europe as part of an Erasmus + partnership, culminating in the open access book Precarious Housing in Europe: A Critical Guide.

• 2021: Solidarity in Diversity(£216594.28 from Interreg (ERDF) Europe)
• 2019: Precarious housing in Europe. Pushing for innovation in higher education(£48088.47 from Interreg (ERDF) Europe)
• 2018: Rethinking Resistence: Creativity and Potentiality in the UK Asylum System(£93331.00 from ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics (INNOGEN))

Available for media contact about:

• Citizenship, state and governance: Refugees, asylum policy, and the impacts of migration
• Policy and politics: Refugees, asylum policy, and the impacts of migration
• Security, territory and boundaries: Refugees, asylum policy, and the impacts of migration
• Social and ethical inequality: Refugees, asylum policy, and the impacts of migration

Authored book

• Darling, J. (2022). Systems of Suffering: Dispersal and the Denial of Asylum. Pluto Press.

Book review

• Darling, Jonathan (2017). Global Migration: patterns, processes, and politics. Geography 102: 164-165.
• Darling, Jonathan (2016). Book review: Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility, Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. Kotef Hagar, Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2015; 248 pp.: 9780822358558, £16.99 (pbk).Szary Anne-Laure Amilhat Giraut Frédéric (eds) Borderities and the Politics of Contemporary Mobile Borders. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; 328 pp.: 9781137468840, £65.00 (hbk). Progress in Human Geography 40(5): 708-712.
• Darling, Jonathan (2009). ‘Sleepwalking to segregation’? challenging myths about race and migration by N. Finney and L. Simpson. Policy Press, Bristol, 2009. No. of pages: x + 218, ISBN 978 1 84742 007 7 (paperback), 978 1 84742 008 4 (hardback). Population, Space and Place 15(6): 538.
• Darling, Jonathan (2009). Book review: Talbot, D. 2007: Regulating the night: race, culture and exclusion in the making of the nighttime economy. Aldershot: Ashgate. 164 pp. £50 cloth. ISBN: 978 0 7546 4752 2. Progress in Human Geography 33(4): 573.

Chapter in book

• Bolt, G. & Darling, J. (2022). Precariousness and the Right to Housing. In Precarious Housing in Europe: A Critical Guide. Munch, S. & Siede, A. Donatau Press. 11-35.
• Darling, J. (2020). Vulnerable Subjects. In Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students. Wilson, H.F. & Darling, J. Sage. 159-169.
• Darling, J. & Wilson, H.F. (2020). Geography and Ethics. In Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students. Wilson, H.F. & Darling, J. Sage. 6-22.
• Darling, J. (2020). Expectations. In Research Ethics for Human Geography: A Handbook for Students. Wilson, H.F. & Darling, J. Sage. 73-81.
• Darling, Jonathan (2020). ‘Another politics of the city’ Urban practices of refuge, advocacy and activism. In Refugee Imaginaries: Research Across the Humanities. Cox, Emma, Durrant, Sam, Farrier, David, Stonebridge, Lyndsey & Wooley, Agnes University of Edinburgh Press. 554-570.
• Darling, Jonathan (2020). Out-sourcing refuge: distance, deferral, and immunity in the urban governance of refugees. In Displacement: Global Conversations on Refuge. Pasquetti, Silvia & Sanyal, Romola Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Darling, J. (2020). Hosting the displaced: from sanctuary cities to hospitable homes. In The Handbook of Displacement. Adey, P. Bowstead, J. Brickell, K. Desai, V. Dolton, M. Pinkerton, A. & Siddiqi, A. Palgrave MacMillan.
• Darling, Jonathan & Bauder, Harald (2019). Introduction: rescaling migration, citizenship, and rights. In Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles: Rescaling Migration, Citizenship, and Rights. Darling, Jonathan & Bauder, Harald University of Manchester Press.
• Darling, Jonathan (2019). Sanctuary, presence, and the politics of urbanism. In Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles: Rescaling Migration, Citizenship, and Rights. Darling, Jonathan & Bauder, Harald Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Darling, Jonathan (2017). Refugees. In International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. 1.
• Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan (2016). The possibilities of encounter. In Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. 1-24.
• Darling, Jonathan (2016). Defying the demand to 'go home': from human rights cities to the urbanisation of human rights. In Global Urban Justice: The Rise of Human Rights Cities. Oomen, Barbara, Davis, Martha & Grigolo, Michele Cambridge University Press. 121-138.
• Darling, Jonathan (2015). What role might cities play in UK asylum policy? In On Devo. Waddington, Alex Manchester University Press. 16-18.
• Darling, Jonathan (2014). Welcome to Sheffield: the less-than-violent geographies of urban asylum. In Geographies of Peace. McConnell, Fiona, Megoran, Nick & Williams, Philippa IB Tauris. 229-249.
• Darling, Jonathan & Squire, Vicki (2013). Everyday enactments of sanctuary: the UK City of Sanctuary movement. In Sanctuary Practices in International Perspectives. Lippert, Randy & Rehaag, Sean Routledge. 191-204.
• Darling, Jonathan (2010). Just being there.: Ethics, experimentation, and the cultivation of care. In Taking-Place: Non-representational theories and geography. Anderson, Ben & Harrison, Paul Ashgate. 241-260.

Edited book

• Wilson, Helen F. & Darling, Jonathan (2020). Research Ethics for Human Geography. Sage.
• Darling, Jonathan & Bauder, Harald (2019). Sanctuary Cities and Urban Struggles: Rescaling Migration, Citizenship, and Rights. University of Manchester Press.
• Darling, Jonathan & Wilson, Helen F. (2016). Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Journal Article

• Till, Karen E., Gill, Nick, Jacobsen, Malene H., Darling, Jonathan & O’Reilly, Zoë (2022). The In-Between Spaces of Asylum and Migration: A Participatory Visual Approach. The AAG Review of Books 10(2): 41-50.
• Darling, J. (2022). The politics of discretion: authority and influence in asylum dispersal. Political Geography 94: 102560.
• Darling, Jonathan (2021). The Cautious Politics of “Humanizing” Refugee Research. Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees 37(2): 56-62.
• Darling, J. (2021). Refugee urbanism: seeing asylum ‘like a city’. Urban Geography 42(7): 894-914.
• Rishbeth, Clare, Blachnicka-Ciacek, Dominika & Darling, Jonathan (2019). Participation and wellbeing in urban greenspace: ‘curating sociability’ for refugees and asylum seekers. Geoforum 106: 125-134.
• Darling, Jonathan (2018). The fragility of welcome – commentary to Gill. Fennia 196(2): 220-224.
• Darling, Jonathan (2017). Acts, ambiguities, and the labour of contesting citizenship. Citizenship Studies 21(6): 727-736.
• Darling, Jonathan (2017). Forced migration and the city: irregularity, informality, and the politics of presence. Progress in Human Geography 41(2): 178-198.
• Darling, Jonathan (2016). Asylum in Austere Times: Instability, Privatization and Experimentation within the UK Asylum Dispersal System. Journal of Refugee Studies 29(4): 483-505.
• Darling, Jonathan (2016). Privatising asylum: neoliberalisation, depoliticisation and the governance of forced migration. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41(3): 230-243.
• Darling, Jonathan (2016). Forced migrants in the UK. Geography Review 30(1): 10-15.
• Darling, Jonathan (2014). Emotions, Encounters and Expectations: The Uncertain Ethics of ‘The Field’. Journal of Human Rights Practice 6(2): 201-212.
• Darling, Jonathan (2014). From Hospitality to Presence. Peace Review 26(2): 162-169.
• Antonsich, M., Fortier, A.-M., Darling, J., Wood, N. & Closs Stephens, A. (2014). Reading Angharad Closs Stephens's The Persistence of Nationalism. From imagined communities to urban encounters. Political Geography 40: 56-63.
• Darling, Jonathan (2014). Asylum and the Post-Political: Domopolitics, Depoliticisation and Acts of Citizenship. Antipode 46(1): 72-91.
• Darling, Jonathan (2014). Another Letter from the Home Office: Reading the Material Politics of Asylum. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32(3): 484-500.
• Squire, Vicki & Darling, Jonathan (2013). The “Minor” Politics of Rightful Presence: Justice and Relationality inCity of Sanctuary. International Political Sociology 7(1): 59.
• Darling, Jonathan (2013). Moral Urbanism, Asylum, and the Politics of Critique. Environment and Planning A 45(8): 1785-1801.
• Darling, Jonathan, Healey, Ruth & Healey, Lauren (2012). Seeing the city anew: asylum seeker perspectives on belonging in Greater Manchester. North West Geography 12(1): 20-28.
• Darling, Jonathan (2011). Domopolitics, governmentality and the regulation of asylum accommodation. Political Geography 30(5): 263.
• Darling, Jonathan (2011). Giving space: Care, generosity and belonging in a UK asylum drop-in centre. Geoforum 42(4): 408.
• Darling, Jonathan (2010). Teaching and Learning Guide for: Thinking Beyond Place: The Responsibilities of a Relational Spatial Politics. Geography Compass 4(6): 676.
• Darling, Jonathan (2010). A city of sanctuary: the relational re-imagining of Sheffield’s asylum politics. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 35(1): 125.
• Darling, Jonathan, Barnett, Craig & Eldridge, Sarah (2010). City of Sanctuary - a UK initiative for hospitality. Forced Migration Review (34): 46-47.
• Darling, Jonathan (2009). Becoming Bare Life: Asylum, Hospitality, and the Politics of Encampment. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 27(4): 649-665.
• Darling, Jonathan (2009). Thinking Beyond Place: The Responsibilities of a Relational Spatial Politics. Geography Compass 3(5): 1938.