Maurice Stierl
International Political Sociology / Political Geography
Knowledge production on migration; EU border regime; Mediterranean migration; solidarity, activism, and resistance
Dr Maurice Stierl leads the German Research Foundation funded research project The Production of Spaces of Migrant Disappearance (SFB 1604) at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, Osnabrück University. From 2022 to 2025, he was also leading the research group The Production of Knowledge on Migration.
Before, he was a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. He has also taught at the University of Warwick and the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on migration struggles in contemporary Europe and (northern) Africa and is broadly situated in the fields of International Political Sociology, Political Geography, and Migration, Citizenship and Border Studies.
Dr. Maurice Stierl
© Simone Reukauf
Osnabrück University
IMIS
Seminarstraße 19 a/b
49074 Osnabrück
Office: 03/E14
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Selected publications
- Migrant Resistance in Contemporary Europe (London: Routledge, 2019).
- ‘Modern Slavery and Migration: A Conversation on the Production of Invasive Figures and Racist Imaginaries.’ Sociology 0(0). Online First: 28 November 2025. (With Nandita Dutta).
- ‘Reflexivity as Critique? A Conversation on the Politics of Knowledge Production in Migration Studies.’ Zeitschrift für Migrationsforschung. Online First: 27 June 2025. (With Laura Stielike, Philipp Schäfer, Inken Bartels, Anna Amelina, Iva Dodevska, Maissam Nimer, and Omololá S. Olarinde-Olomola).
- ‘Islands of Solidarity? Migration and Activism in Malta.’ Geopolitics, 1–26. Online First: 04 June 2025. (With Ċetta Mainwaring).
- ‘Performing geographies of disappearance: migration and the case of the Saharan knowledge claim.’ Social & Cultural Geography, 1–21. Online First: 29 May 2025.
- ‘Mare nero? Undoing the decolonial redux, multiplying (post)colonial legacies and struggles.’ Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 51(11), 2695–2714. Online First: 16 April 2025. (With Martina Tazzioli).
- ‘The Moral Economies of Reflexive Migration Studies.’ Migration Studies (2024) 12:3. Online first: 24 June 2024. (With Laura Stielike, Philipp Schäfer, and Inken Bartels).
- ‘Rebel spirits at sea: Disrupting EUrope’s weaponizing of time in maritime migration governance.’ Security Dialogue. Online First: 23 April 2023.
- ‘The Evolution of EUropean Border Governance through Crisis: Frontex and the Interplay of Protracted and Acute Crisis Narratives.’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Online First: 4 February 2023. (With Nina Perkowski and Andrew Burridge).
- ‘“We closed the ports to protect refugees” - Hygienic borders and deterrence humanitarianism during Covid-19.’ International Political Sociology. 2021. Online first. (With Martina Tazzioli)
- ‘The ‘Covid Excuse’: EUropean border violence in the Mediterranean Sea’. Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2021. Online first. (With Deanna Dadusc)
- ‘The Mediterranean as a carceral seascape.’ Political Geography. 2021. Online first.
- ‘Europe’s unsafe environment: migrant confinement under Covid-19.’ Critical Studies on Security (2021), 9:1, 76-80. (With Martina Tazzioli).
- ‘Minor Keywords of Political Theory: Migration as a Critical Standpoint.’ Environment and Planning C: Politics & Space. March 2021. (As member of the New Keywords Collective)
- ‘Building transversal solidarities in European cities: Open harbours, safe communities, home.’ Critical Sociology. January 2021. (With Kim Rygiel and Ilker Ataç)
- ‘Precarious Migrations and Maritime Displacement’. In: Peter Adey et al. (eds.) The Handbook of Displacement (London: Palgrave, 2020). (With Vicki Squire)
- ‘Do No Harm? The Impact of Policy on Migration Scholarship’. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space (2020). Online First: 23 October 2020.
- ‘Re-Imagining EUrope through the Governance of Migration’. International Political Sociology (2020), 14:3, 252–269.
- ‘Of Migrant Slaves and Underground Railroads - Movement, Containment, Freedom’. American Behavioral Scientist (2020), 64:4, 456-479.
- 'Amplifying Migrant Voices and Struggles at Sea as a Radical Practice'. The South Atlantic Quarterly (2019), 118:3, 661-669. (With Nina Schwarz)
- ‘The Struggle of Migrant Women across the Mediterranean Sea’. American Quarterly (2019), 71:4, 1029-1035. (On behalf of Alarm Phone)
- ‘Vers une politique de la liberté de mouvement’, Communications (2019), 104, 79-93. (With Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani)
- ‘A Fleet of Mediterranean Border Humanitarians’, Antipode, (2018), 50:3, 704-724.
- ‘Disobedient Sensing and Border Struggles at the maritime Frontier of EUrope’, Spheres - Journal for Digital Cultures, 4 (2017), 1-15. (With Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani)
- ‘Comparative Views on European and US-Mexican Border Struggles’, Transas, (2017). Translated into Spanish.
- ‘A Sea of Struggle: Activist Border Interventions in the Mediterranean Sea’, Citizenship Studies, 20:5 (2016), 561-578.
- ‘Contestations in Death: The Role of Grief in Migration Struggles’, Citizenship Studies, 20:2 (2016), 173-191.
- ‘Everything is Dangerous: Conduct and Counter-Conduct in the Occupy Movement’, Global Society, 30:2 (2016), 157-178. (With Chris Rossdale)
- ‘The WatchTheMed Alarm Phone. A Disobedient Border-Intervention’, Movements, 1:2 (2015).
- ‘‘No One Is Illegal!’ Resistance and the Politics of Discomfort’, Globalizations, 9:3 (2012), 425-438.
- ‘Bordering Practices’, Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space 40:5, 989-993 (2022). (With Suzan Ilcan and Vicki Squire).
- ‘The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins’, Citizenship Studies, 20:5 (2016), 527-544. (With Kim Rygiel and Ilker Ataç).
- 'Struggles of Migration as in-/visible Politics', Movements, 1:2 (2015), 1-18. (With Ilker Ataç, Sabine Kron, Sarah Schilliger, and Helge Schwiertz).
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‘Grenze’, in Inken Bartels, et al. (eds) Inventar der Migrationsbegriffe, Online First: 7 April 2025. (With Bernd Kasparek).
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‘CommemorAction’, in: Angharad Closs Stephens and Martina Tazzioli (eds.) Collective Movements and Emerging Political Spaces (London: Routledge, 2024).
- ‘EUrope’s border ensemble and the disorder of migrant multiplicities’, in: William Walters and Martina Tazzioli (eds.) Handbook on Governmentality (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023).
- ‘Europas nasse Grenzen’, in: Jochen Oltmer et al. (eds.) Report Globale Flucht 2023 (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 2023).
- ‘Contesting the lethal Mediterranean frontier’, in: Ilse van Liempt et al. (eds.) Research Handbook on Irregular Migration (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2023) (with Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani).
- ‘Argumente für eine Politik der Bewegungsfreiheit.’ In: Hänsel, Heyer, Schmidt-Sembdner, Schwarz (ed.) Grenzregime IV (Berlin: Assoziation A, 2022). (With Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani).
- ‘Toward an archive of migrant struggles’. In: Giorgio Grappi (ed.) Migration and the Contested Politics of Justice (London: Routledge, 2021). (With Martina Tazzioli).
- 'Toward a Politics of Freedom of Movement’, in Reece Jones (ed.), Open Borders: In Defense of Free Movement (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2019). (With Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani).
- ‘Civil Society: From Sympathy to Solidarity’, in: Florian Weis et al (eds.), Atlas of Migration: Facts and figures about people on the move (Berlin: Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung, 2019).
- ‘Excessive Migration, Excessive Governance - Border Entanglements in Greek EUrope’, in: Nicholas de Genova (ed.), The Borders of ‘EUrope’: Autonomy of Migration, Tactics of Bordering (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).
- ‘Europe/Crisis: New Keywords of ‘the Crisis’ in and of ‘Europe', edited by Martina Tazzioli and Nicholas De Genova, New Futures Online, Zone Books. 2016. (Member of the New Keywords Collective).
- Book Review of Island of hope: migration and solidarity in the Mediterranean by Megan Carney, in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2025.
- Book Review of Die konkrete Utopie der Menschenrechte by Wolfgang Kaleck (Berlin: S. Fischer, 2021), on Völkerrechtsblog (2021).
- Book Review of The Migration Apparatus: Security, Labor, and Policymaking in the European Union by Gregory Feldman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), in International Migration Review, 46:4 (2012), pp. 1016-1018.
- Book Review of At Europe’s Edge: Migration and Crisis in the Mediterranean by Ċetta Mainwaring (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), in Society and Space (2022).
- ‘Migration and Activism on the Maltese Archipelago’, Border Criminologies, 15 September 2025. (With Cetta Mainwaring).
- ‘An effigy of refugees, burned by a crowd: this is where Europe’s brutal fantasy of border control has led us’, The Guardian, 30 July 2025.
- ‘Conflicting realities: mapping discrepancies in migrant deaths data on the Atlantic route’, Border Criminologies, 7 April 2025. (With Marta Sánchez Dionis).
- ‘Die Vergrenzung Europas’, Le Monde, 2025.
- 'Maritimer Widerstand im Mittelmeer', Neues Deutschland, 2024.
- 'Ten years of maritime resistance in the Mediterranean Sea', Al Jazeera, 2024.
- ‘Sahara desert vs Mediterranean - where do more migrants actually die?’, EU Observer, 2024.
- ‘Europas rechte Zeitgeister’, Le Monde diplomatique, 10 October 2024.
- ‘Germany’s border clampdown threatens the entire European project’, The Guardian, 13 September 2024.
- ‘Migration Magnets, Migration Myths: The Pull Factor Mirage’, Forced Migration Studies Blog, 2023.
- ‘Migration: Let us put the 'pull factor' myth finally to rest’, EU Observer, 2023.
- ‘Covid-19 and the Mediterranean Mobility Regime’, NRCC On The Move, 2023.
- ‘A right to European asylum’, Open Democracy, 2023. (With Martina Tazzioli).
- ‘Frontex off Campus! An Interview with Professor Michele Lancione’. Border Criminologies, 2023.
- ‘The EU’s secret weapon against refugees - time’, Aljazeera, 17 May 2023.
- ‘Krisennarrative in der europäischen Migrationspolitik’, Soziopolis, 12 April 2023. (With Nina Perkowski and Andrew Burridge).
- ‘A right to European asylum’, Open Democracy, 31 January 2023. (With Martina Tazzioli).
- ‘One hundred days of refugee protest in Libya’, Open Democracy, 3 March 2022. (With Martina Tazzioli).
- 'EU solidarity with Poland on migration: a violent response to an imagined threat’, The Conversation, 6 December 2021.
- 'Freedom for the ElHiblu3!’, Aljazeera, 22 October 2021. (With Sandro Mezzadra).
- 'The Borders of Human Rights and the Need for Utopian Blueprints Today’, Völkerrechtsblog, 19 August 2021.
- 'Mediterranean carcerality and acts of escape’, Open Democracy, 16 July 2021.
- 'Heroes, not ‘terrorists’: The trial of the ElHiblu3 in Malta’, Aljazeera, 25 March 2021.
- 'Lawfare on solidarity at sea: The Mediterranean rescuers facing trial’, Open Democracy, 16 March 2021.
- 'CommemorActions: Remembering those lost at Europe's borders’, Open Democracy, 9 March 2021.
- 'Call it what it is, a massacre at Europe’s doorstep’, Aljazeera, 21 November 2020. (With Deanna Dadusc).
- ‘How should we study Europe’s harmful migration policies?’, Open Democracy, 29 October 2020.
- 'Freedom and Force: Contesting the Figure of the Migrant Slave’, Border Criminologies, 14 October 2020.
- ‘UN refugee agency calls on EU nations to let in migrants rescued in Mediterranean’, The Guardian, 29 August 2020. (With Lorenzo Tondo and Molly Blackall).
- ‘Banksy-funded boat nears 'state of emergency' as it shelters 200 people’, The Guardian, 28 August 2020. (With Lorenzo Tondo).
- 'Banksy funds refugee rescue boat operating in Mediterranean’, The Guardian, 27 August 2020. (With Lorenzo Tondo).
- 'Black lives are being lost in the Mediterranean – but the world remains silent’, The Conversation, 8 July 2020.
- 'Migration: how Europe is using coronavirus to reinforce its hostile environment in the Mediterranean, The Conversation, 13 May 2020.
- ' What happens to Freedom of Movement during a Pandemic?’, Open Democracy, 24 March 2020. (With Sandro Mezzadra).
- 'WatchTheMed Alarm Phone: A Response for Rescue and a Call for Change', Interview with European Council on Refugees and Exiles, 14 February 2020. (With Deanna Dadusc and Britta Rabe).
- 'How migrants and their supporters are reviving the ethos of the 19th-century underground railroad’, The Conversation, 19 December 2019.
- 'Can Migrants at Sea be Heard?’, Discover Society, 6 November 2019.
- ‘UN migration agency accused of pressuring Bangladeshis to return home', The Guardian, 26 August 2019. (With Lorenzo Tondo).
- 'Bangladeshi migrants in Tunisia forced to return home, aid groups claim', The Guardian, 25 June 2019. (With Lorenzo Tondo).
- ‘Migrants stranded at sea for three weeks now risk deportation, aid groups warn’, The Guardian, 19 June 2019. (With Lorenzo Tondo).
- 'EU sued at International Criminal Court over Mediterranean migration policy – as more die at sea’, The Conversation, 04 June 2019.
- 'The Mediterranean battlefield of migration’, Open Democracy, 12 April 2019. (With Sandro Mezzadra).
- 'From Migrants to Pirates: How Identities Change During Mediterranean Passage’, The Globe Post, 3 April 2019.
- 'Migrants calling us in distress from the Mediterranean returned to Libya by deadly ‘refoulement’ industry’, The Conversation, 7 February 2019.
- 'Every refugee boat a rebellion? Supporting border transgressions at sea’, Open Democracy, 18 September 2016. The Conversation, 7 February 2019.