Staff profile

Positions

2020-present Associate Professor in Political Geography, Durham University

2016-2020 Assistant Professor/Lecturer in Political Geography, Durham University

2016-2019 Associate Editor, Environment & Planning D: Society and Space.

2013-2015 Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland.

2011-2013 Postdoctoral Researcher, Mobilities, Borders & Identities Research Group, Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland.

Qualifications

• BA, Philosophy, Grinnell College, USA
• MA, Geography, University of Kentucky, USA
• Certificate in Gender and Women's Studies, University of Kentucky, USA
• PhD, Geography, University of Kentucky, USA
• Docent, Political Geography, University of Oulu, Finland

Research Projects

I am a political and feminist geography specialising in carceral geographies, borders and refugee governance.My current work collaborates with non-academic partners, promoting and embedding lived experience of displacement and state violence in knowledge production. I am interested in how the privatisation, diffusion and outsourcing of border enforcement and humanitarian technology are producing new political economic formations--and how these formations presupposed excludable migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees.

 

In 2025-2027 I am working on two projects:

 

(1) Making Stockton a Home with Refugee Futures. Based on refugee-led interviews in 2023, we have shared findings and implemented sanctuary-seekers' suggested to improve connection, community and belonging in Stockton. You can find out more here: https://refugeefutures.org/research/

Funding: ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, ESRC Standard Grant.

 

(2) Border Industry Database Project, with Lorrain Leete of Legal Centre Lesvos, Spyros Galinos of Migrant Solidarity and academic colleagues Anna Carastathis, Aila Spathopoulou, Geoff Boyce. ESThis project will public a report and the first database documenting private sector involvement in systematic pushbacks in the Aegean Sea, a practice that has been found in violation of human rights. For more information on human rights in the Greek islands, see here: https://legalcentrelesv...enging-border-violence/

Funding: Durham University Department of Geography Research Development Fund (2024-2025), Antipode Right to the Discipline Foundation Grant (2025-2026), Durham University Seedcord Award (2025-2026).

 

Previous Projects:

Economies of Exclusion: Money, Labour and Value in Immigration and Asylum Politics (Political Economy Fellowship 2020, Independent Social Research Foundation)

In this project, I drew from broader geographical debates about value, lively commodities, and bioeconomies to think through the economics of securitised migration control. Research on the privatization, outsourcing, and commodification of migration control practices identifies a number of new political economic orders: immigration industrial complexes, migration industries, detention rights industries, and intimate economies of detention. Public-private governance is increasingly common in refugee and migration governance, as state borders and citizenship administration are outsourced in many countries.  To understand contemporary migration control regimes, in short, we must examine the novel economic relationships sustain them. Analysing privatised immigration detention in the US and asylum-seeker debit cards in the UK, this research proposes a novel theorisation of the circuits of value that allows carceral practices of migration control to expand and endure.

GLiTCH: Digital Connectivity & Financial Inclusion in Refugee Governance, ESRC Standard Grant 2020-2024

Research Team: Glenda Garelli (Leeds), Martina Tazzioli (Bologna), Lauren Martin, Aila Spathopolou (Stirling), Hanna Ruszczyk (Sunderland), Jake Cassani

This project examined how financial and digital technologies are transforming refugee governance.  Financial and digital technologies allow people to move, live and work in new ways and yet there is little research asking how digital technologies and debit cards change relationships between humanitarian organisations, aid workers, refugees and recipients, new private sector actors and government agencies. Conceptually, GLiTCH bridges bridged research on economies of migration control, finance-security assemblages, and techno-humanitarianism. Our project asked how these technologies are changing humanitarianism, governance and refugees' everyday lives. By including diverse actors in the refugee sector and participatory co-produced research, our project aims to reveal emerging transformations in humanitarian outreach and the new barriers produced by them.

 

 

• Border and Migration Policing
• Carceral Geographies
• Feminist Geography
• Political Geography
• Security

Book review

• Reading Matt Hannah's Direction and socio-spatial theory: A political economy of oriented practice, Routledge, London (2019), 218 pp.; £ 105.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781138061040
  
  Rose, M., Minca, C., Joronen, M., Martin, L., Philo, C., & Hannah, M. (2020). Reading Matt Hannah’s Direction and socio-spatial theory: A political economy of oriented practice, Routledge, London (2019), 218 pp.; £ 105.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 9781138061040. Political Geography, 77, Article 102056. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2019.102056
• Review Essay Detaining Noncitizens: Law, Security, Crime, and Politics
  
  Martin, L. (2012). Review Essay Detaining Noncitizens: Law, Security, Crime, and Politics. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 30(4), 748-755. https://doi.org/10.1068/d3004rev

Chapter in book

• The Problem of Access: Site Visits, Selective Disclosure, and Freedom of Information in Qualitative Security Research
  
  Belcher, O., & Martin, L. (2019). The Problem of Access: Site Visits, Selective Disclosure, and Freedom of Information in Qualitative Security Research. In M. de Goede, E. Bosma, & P. Pallister-Wilkins (Eds.), Secrecy and methods in critical security research. (pp. 33-47). Routledge.
• Discretion, contracting, and commodification: privatisation of US immigration detention as a technology of government
  
  Martin, L. (2017). Discretion, contracting, and commodification: privatisation of US immigration detention as a technology of government. In D. Conlon & N. Hiemstra (Eds.), Intimate economies of immigration detention : critical perspectives. (pp. 32-50). Routledge.
• Security
  
  Martin, L. (2015). Security. In J. Agnew, V. Mamadouh, A. Secor, & J. Sharp (Eds.), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Geography (pp. 100-113). Wiley.
• Getting out and getting in: Legal geographies of US immigration detention
  
  Martin, L. (2013). Getting out and getting in: Legal geographies of US immigration detention. In D. Moran, N. Gill, & D. Conlon (Eds.), Carceral spaces : mobility and agency in imprisonment and migrant detention. (pp. 149-166). Ashgate Publishing.
• Carceral mobility and flexible territoriality in immigration enforcement
  
  Martin, L. (n.d.). Carceral mobility and flexible territoriality in immigration enforcement. In K. Mitchell, R. Jones, & J. Fluri (Eds.), Handbook on Critical Geographies of Migration. [Contracted by publisher] (pp. 244-254). Edward Elgar Press.

Journal Article

• From Impact to Abolition: For an Unruly Migration Studies
  
  Martin, L. L. (2026). From Impact to Abolition: For an Unruly Migration Studies. Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 117(2), 187-189. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.70076
• Humanitarian frontiering: Competition, markets, and governance in refugee cash assistance programs
  
  Martin, L. L., & Ruszczyk, H. A. (2026). Humanitarian frontiering: Competition, markets, and governance in refugee cash assistance programs. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518x261420630
• Conceptualising US Immigration Detention as Carceral Real Estate
  
  Martin, L. L. (2023). Conceptualising US Immigration Detention as Carceral Real Estate. Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 56(2), 558-580. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12992
• Value extraction through refugee carcerality: Data, labour and financialised accommodation
  
  Martin, L. L., & Tazzioli, M. (2023). Value extraction through refugee carcerality: Data, labour and financialised accommodation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(2), 191-209. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758231157397
• Documenting Detention: The Politics of Archiving Immigration Enforcement Records in the United States’ National Archives and Records Administration
  
  Hughes, S. M., & Martin, L. L. (2022). Documenting Detention: The Politics of Archiving Immigration Enforcement Records in the United States’ National Archives and Records Administration. Professional Geographer, 74(3), 415-429. https://doi.org/10.1080/00330124.2022.2037439
• Carceral Economies of Migration Control
  
  Martin, L. L. (2021). Carceral Economies of Migration Control. Progress in Human Geography, 45(4), 740-757. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132520940006
• Destitution Economies: Circuits of Value in Asylum, Refugee, And Migration Control
  
  Coddington, K., Conlon, D., & Martin, L. (2020). Destitution Economies: Circuits of Value in Asylum, Refugee, And Migration Control. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 110(5), 1425-1444. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1715196
• Making labour mobile: Borders, precarity, and the competitive state in Finnish migration politics
  
  Martin, L., & Prokkola, E. (2017). Making labour mobile: Borders, precarity, and the competitive state in Finnish migration politics. Political Geography, 60, 143-153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.07.009
• Polymorphic Borders
  
  Burridge, A., Gill, N., Kocher, A., & Martin, L. (2017). Polymorphic Borders. Territory, Politics, Governance, 5(3), 239-251. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2017.1297253
• Afterword: spatialities of transnational lived citizenship
  
  Martin, L., & Paasi, A. (2016). Afterword: spatialities of transnational lived citizenship. Global Networks, 16(3), 344-349. https://doi.org/10.1111/glob.12116
• Noncitizen Detention : Spatial Strategies of Migrant Precarity in US Immigration and Border Control
  
  Martin, L. (2015). Noncitizen Detention : Spatial Strategies of Migrant Precarity in US Immigration and Border Control. Annales de Géographie, 702-703(2/3), 231-247. https://doi.org/10.3917/ag.702.0231
• Deportation and the Dispossession of Time
  
  Martin, L., & Kask, E. (2015). Deportation and the Dispossession of Time. Darkmatter, 12, Article 3.
• Towards a post-mathematical topology
  
  Martin, L., & Secor, A. J. (2014). Towards a post-mathematical topology. Progress in Human Geography, 38(3), 420-438. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132513508209
• "Ethnographies of Closed Doors: Conceptualizing Openness and Closure in US Immigration and Military Institutions"
  
  Belcher, O., & Martin, L. (2013). "Ethnographies of Closed Doors: Conceptualizing Openness and Closure in US Immigration and Military Institutions". Area, 45(4), 403-410. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12048
• Familial Relations: Spaces, Subjects, and Politics
  
  Harker, C., & Martin, L. (2012). Familial Relations: Spaces, Subjects, and Politics. Environment and Planning A, 44(4), 768-775. https://doi.org/10.1068/a4513
• Dialectics of Disassembly: Heifer-Care Protocols and the Alienation of Value in a Village Dairy Cooperative
  
  Mutersbaugh, T., & Martin, L. (2012). Dialectics of Disassembly: Heifer-Care Protocols and the Alienation of Value in a Village Dairy Cooperative. Environment and Planning A, 44(3). https://doi.org/10.1068/a44157
• Governing through the Family: Struggles over US Noncitizen Family Detention Policy
  
  Martin, L. L. (2012). Governing through the Family: Struggles over US Noncitizen Family Detention Policy. Environment and Planning A, 44(4). https://doi.org/10.1068/a4477a
• ‘Catch and Remove’: Detention, Deterrence, and Discipline in US Noncitizen Family Detention Practice
  
  Martin, L. L. (2012). ‘Catch and Remove’: Detention, Deterrence, and Discipline in US Noncitizen Family Detention Practice. Geopolitics, 17(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2011.554463
• The geopolitics of vulnerability: children's legal subjectivity, immigrant family detention and US immigration law and enforcement policy
  
  Martin, L. (2011). The geopolitics of vulnerability: children’s legal subjectivity, immigrant family detention and US immigration law and enforcement policy. Gender, Place and Culture, 18(4), 477-498. https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369x.2011.583345
• Bombs, bodies, and biopolitics: securitizing the subject at the airport security checkpoint
  
  Martin, L. L. (2010). Bombs, bodies, and biopolitics: securitizing the subject at the airport security checkpoint. Social and Cultural Geography, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/14649360903414585
• Geographies of Detention and Imprisonment: Interrogating Spatial Practices of Confinement, Discipline, Law, and State Power
  
  Martin, L. L., & Mitchelson, M. L. (2009). Geographies of Detention and Imprisonment: Interrogating Spatial Practices of Confinement, Discipline, Law, and State Power. Geography Compass, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00196.x
• "Everywhere and Nowhere: The Exception and the Topological Challenge to Geography"
  
  Belcher, O., Martin, L., Secor, A., Simon, S., & Wilson, T. (2008). "Everywhere and Nowhere: The Exception and the Topological Challenge to Geography". Antipode, 40(4), 499-503. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2008.00620.x
• A Formula for Disaster: The Department of Homeland Security's Virtual Ontology
  
  Martin, L., & Simon, S. (2008). A Formula for Disaster: The Department of Homeland Security’s Virtual Ontology. Space and Polity, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/13562570802515127
• Certified organic agriculture in Mexico: Market connections and certification practices in large and small producers
  
  Gómez Tovar, L., Martin, L., Gómez Cruz, M. A., & Mutersbaugh, T. (2005). Certified organic agriculture in Mexico: Market connections and certification practices in large and small producers. Journal of Rural Studies, 21(4). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2005.10.002

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Destitution Economies: Mapping Relations Of Enforced Precarity
  
  Coddington, K., Conlon, D., & Martin, L. (2018). Destitution Economies: Mapping Relations Of Enforced Precarity.

Report

• Making Stockton a Home: Research and Impact Report
  
  Martin, L., & Wali, K. (2026). Making Stockton a Home: Research and Impact Report. Durham University. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20025772

Working Paper

• Finance, technology & displacement: towards a research agenda.
  
  Martin, L., & Harker, C. (2020). Finance, technology & displacement: towards a research agenda.