Ellie Harrison

Hannah Jones

Sally O'Reilly

Confessions of a Recovering Data Collector

Kirsty Jones

'If I could have any wish it wouldn't be a year in Disneyland or a part in High School Musical. What I'd like is to live just one day without having to stop and rest when my heart gets tired: I'd just waste my energy, doing stuff with friends. But I can't and feeling unhappy about it is a waste of time. Being happy gives me far more energy - so much so that sometimes I want to do a cartwheel even though I can't actually manage it. So that's how I try to feel each day: my decision wasn't about dying. It's about living.' Hannah Jones was diagnosed with leukaemia when she was just four years old. As young as she was, she overcame the disease but only to face yet another trauma: the drugs given to treat her cancer caused a rare side effect damaging her heart. Continually in and out of hospital, doctors thought Hannah's body might accommodate the heart defect as she grew stronger. But when Hannah was twelve years old she went into sudden heart failure and, as her life hung in the balance, medics said she needed a transplant to save it. Hannah's parents knew just one thing: Hannah deserved to decide her own destiny. Doctors told Hannah that while a successful heart transplant could prolong her life, the operation was also very risky and the anti-rejection drugs could also cause the leukaemia to return. Wise beyond her years after learning to cope with so much ill health, Hannah made her choice: she did not want the transplant. She'd had enough of hospitals and wanted to be at home with her family. Now Kirsty and Hannah tell their unique story and, with wit and honesty, their interweaving voices movingly describe their experiences over the past decade and how contemplating death has taught them so much about living. But perhaps most importantly, both mother and child explain how their mutual strength and courage have inspired them to live life in a different way. Hannah's Choice is an emotional, funny and spirited story about beating the odds and finding joy in each day.

A Daughter's Love for Life - The Mother Who Let Her Make the Hardest Decision of All

Hannah's Choice

An elected politician is assassinated in the street by a terrorist associated with extreme political groups, and the national response is to encourage picnics. Thousands of people are held in prison-like conditions without judicial oversight or any time-limit on their sentence. An attempt to re-assert national sovereignty and borders leads thousands of citizens to register for dual citizenship with other countries, some overcoming family associations with genocide in their second country of nationality to do so. This is life in the UK today. How then are things still continuing as ‘normal’? How can we confront these phenomena and why do we so often refuse to? What are the practices that help us to accommodate the unconscionable? How might we contend with the horrors that meet us each day, rather than becoming desensitized to them? Violent Ignorance sets out to examine these questions through an understanding of how the past persists in the present, how trauma is silenced or reappears, and how we might reimagine identity and connection in ways that counter - rather than ignore - historic violence. In particular Hannah Jones shows how border controls and enforcement, and its corollary, racism and violence, have shifted over time. Drawing on thinkers from John Berger to Ben Okri, from Audre Lorde to Susan Sontag, the book questions what it means to belong, and discusses how hierarchies of belonging are revealed by what we can see, and what we can ignore.

Confronting Racism and Migration Control

Violent Ignorance

An elected politician is assassinated in the street by a terrorist associated with extreme political groups, and the national response is to encourage picnics. Thousands of people are held in prison-like conditions without judicial oversight or any time-limit on their sentence . An attempt to re-assert national sovereignty and borders leads thousands of citizens to register for dual citizenship with other countries, some overcoming family associations with genocide in their second country of nationality to do so. This is life in the UK today. How then are things still continuing as 'normal'? How can we confront these phenomena and why do we so often refuse to? What are the practices that help us to accommodate the unconscionable? How might we contend with the horrors that meet us each day, rather than becoming desensitized to them? Violent Ignorance sets out to examine these questions through an understanding of how the past persists in the present, how trauma is silenced or reappears, and how we might reimagine identity and connection in ways that counter - rather than ignore - historic violence. In particular Hannah Jones shows how border controls and enforcement, and its corollary, racism and violence, have shifted over time. Drawing on thinkers from John Berger to Ben Okri, from Audre Lorde to Susan Sontag, the book questions what it means to belong, and discusses how hierarchies of belonging are revealed by what we can see, and what we can ignore.

Emma Jackson

What does it mean to belong in a place, or more than one place? This exciting new volume brings together work from cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholars researching home, migration and belonging, using their original research to argue for greater attention to how feeling and emotion is deeply embedded in social structures and power relations. Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging argues for a practical cosmopolitanism that recognises relations of power and struggle, and that struggles over place are often played out through emotional attachment. Taking the reader on a journey through research encounters spiralling out from the global city of London, through English suburbs and European cities to homes and lives in Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Mexico, the contributors show ways in which international and intercontinental migrations and connections criss-cross and constitute local places in each of their case studies. With a reflection on the practice of 'writing cities' from two leading urbanists and a focus throughout the volume on empirical work driving theoretical elaboration, this book will be essential reading for those interested in the politics of social science method, transnational urbanism, affective practices and new perspectives on power relations in neoliberal times. The international range of linked case studies presented here will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, anthropology, urban studies, cultural studies and contemporary history, and for urban policy makers interested in innovative perspectives on social relations and urban form.

Emotion and Location

Stories of Cosmopolitan Belonging

William Davies

Yasmin Gunaratnam

Kirsten Forkert

Gargi Bhattacharyya

Roiyah Saltus

Sukhwant Dhaliwal

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. In July 2013, the UK government arranged for a van to drive through parts of London carrying the message 'In the UK illegally? GO HOME or face arrest.' This book tells the story of what happened next. The vans were short-lived, but they were part of an ongoing trend in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate toughness on immigration. The authors set out to explore the effects of such performances: on policy, on public debate, on pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. This book presents their findings, and provides insights into the practice of conducting research on such a charged and sensitive topic.

The politics of immigration controversies

Go home?

Hannah Jones

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