Prof Ben Rogaly

Biography

Ben is Professor of Human Geography and a member of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research.  He comes to Geography from an interdisciplinary social science background. Before joining Sussex in 2003, Ben was based at the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, where he had been a member of faculty since 1996. He has also worked as a Research Officer at Oxford and Reading Universities, and as a policy advisor at Oxfam (UK).  Ben's doctoral research at Oxford University (completed in 1994) focused on employment arrangements for agricultural workers in West Bengal, India. He has subsequently led major research projects in in the UK, India and Mexico.

Ben's research divides into two main themes as set out below. Both themes are reflected in his  Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Fellowship entitled Places for All? A Multi-Media Investigation of Citizenship, Work and Belonging in a Fast-Changing Provincial City. The Fellowship, which runs until March 2013, forms part of the Royal Society of Arts' Citizen Power in Peterborough Programme. In collaboration with arts practitioner colleagues, Ben is exploring the commonality of multiple place attachments within and across national borders, using oral history, film, photography, and theatre. The Fellowship also involves an investigation of changing employment patterns in Peterborough in the context of the building of new residential areas and relatively high levels of inward migration. 

1 Social and historical geographies of identity, 'race', place, class, faith and migration in England

Ben's recent work with historian Becky Taylor has used archival, ethnographic and oral history evidence to disrupt the popular idea that white working class communities are fixed in place and threatened by the arrival of immigrants and people of colour. One of the key arguments of Ben and Becky's recent book Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England is that white working-class emigration, and the continued stretching of 'indigenous' lifeworlds both within and across national boundaries, have influenced contemporary debates on 'race' and immigration. A second key argument stresses the importance of relationality and ambivalence in subjective experiences of class and place, not least in schools and in universities. The book was drawn on by Lynsey Hanley in a recent Guardian article. A paperback edition with a Foreword by Lynsey was published in April 2011.

Ben was co-investigator in an exploratory follow-on project, funded by the research councils' Connected Communities programme, called Sacred Communities: Connected Practices Across Place and Time. This research - a collaboration with anthropologist Abby Day - included a review of transcripts from a total of 143 interviews, conducted as part of Ben and Becky's previous work in Norwich and Abby's in North Yorkshire. The research aimed to produce new insights on the everyday, embodied practices of faith and community, focusing on the ways such practices stretch (and change) across space and time.

2 Political economic geographies of temporary migrant work in India and the UK

Ben's research on work-place regimes for temporary migrant workers has focused mainly on the agricultural sector. In the UK he has carried out in-depth interviews with employers, labour contractors, workers and food retailers, and revealed how the concentration of market power at the retailer end of the food supply chain has led to the intensification of work for people employed in food production.

Ben's multi-scale research insists on simultaneous attention both to the political economic causes of inequality in capitalist work-places, and to workers' subjectivities, including various forms of resistance. In his recent writing he has attempted to extend writing on labour geographies, which has previously focused largely on the agency of workers who are organised in unions, to consider the specific spatiotemporalities of workers hired for just a few weeks or months at a time and who often rely on employers for both accommodation and transport. Ben has also continued to collaborate in research on temporary migrant workers in India with colleagues Janet Seeley, Abdur Rafique and Deeptima Massey. A book of research participants' life histories Known Face, Unkown Life: Voices of Temporary Migrants in West Bengal, edited by Abdur Rafique, has been published in Bengali. An English translation is available on the website of the Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty, which funded the work. 

In Autumn 2013-14 Ben will be on leave before taking up the role of Head of the Geography Department in the Spring term when he will also convene and teach an MA course: Migration, Inequality and Social Change.

At Sussex he is currently co-supervising two doctoral students:

Debbie Humphry, Moving On? A Class Analysis of Social Mobility in an Inner London Locality, ESRC-funded. 

Alexa Neale, Capital Domicide: Home and Murder in the Mid-Twentieth Century Metropolis, AHRC-funded. 

A third co-supervised student, Amy Clarke, is due to start her ESRC-funded research degree in September 2013 with the following provisional title: When 'they' become 'us': exploring understandings of integration and belonging among white middle-class British adults.

Ben is also external advisory supervisor for Annika Wetlesen's PhD thesis on workers' agency in the Tamil Nadu construction industry (University of Oslo).  

He has supervised seven doctoral students through to completion:

Sally Daly, Pick, Pack, Sell: Producing Horticulture in 21st Century Ireland, 2012 (as external supervisor for the Dublin Institute of Technology).

Donna Simpson, Immigration Status and the Experience of Migrant Workers in British Horticulture, 2011 (ESRC CASE Studentship in collaboration with the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Migrants' Rights Network).

Deeptima Massey, Experiencing Staying Behind: A Study of Women's Lives During the Temporary Absence of Migrant Men in Rural West Bengal, India, 2008 (Development Research Centre on Migration, Globalisation and Poverty bursary).

Daniel Coppard, Surface Tension: Water and Agrarian Change in a Rainfed Village, West Bengal, India, 2005 (ESRC studentship).

Primitivo Viray, A Study of the Impact of the Tibod Microcredit Organisation in Gingoog, Philippines, 2003.

Nitya Rao, Standing One's Ground: Gender, Land and Livelihoods in the Santal Parganas, Jharkhand, India, 2002 (University of East Anglia studentship).

Valerie Roberts, Building Social Capital Through Microcredit: The Impact of a Rural Credit Programme on Borrowers, 2002.

Anderson, Bridget, Rogaly, Ben and Ruhs, Martin (2012) Chasing ghosts: researching illegality in migrant labour markets. In: Handbook of research methods in migration. Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Cheltenham, pp. 396-410. ISBN 9781849803113

Rogaly, Ben and Thieme, Susan (2012) Experiencing space-time: the stretched lifeworlds of migrant workers in India. Environment and Planning A, 44 (9). pp. 2086-2100. ISSN 0308-518X

Rogaly, Ben (2011) 'Indigenous' transnationalism: life geographies of the 'white working-class'. Working Paper. Institute for the Study of European Transitions.

Rogaly, Ben and Taylor, Becky (2010) 'They Called Them Communists Then … What D'You Call 'Em Now? … Insurgents?'. Narratives of British Military Expatriates in the Context of the New Imperialism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36 (8). pp. 1335-1351. ISSN 1369-183X

Rogaly, Ben (2009) Spaces of work and everyday life: labour geographies and the agency of unorganised temporary migrant workers. Geography Compass, 3 (6). pp. 1975-1987. ISSN 1749-8198

Rogaly, Ben and Taylor, Becky (2009) Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England. Identity Studies in the Social Sciences . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. ISBN 9780230219939

Rogaly, Ben and Taylor, Becky (2009) 'I Don't Want to Be Classed, But We're All Classed': Making Liveable Lives Across Generations. In: Identity in the 21st Century: New Trends in Changing Times. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 41-58. ISBN 9780230580879

Rogaly, Ben and Taylor, Becky (2009) Moving Representations of the 'Indigenous White Working Class'. In: Who Cares about the White Working Class? Runnymede Trust, London, pp. 51-59. ISBN 9781906732103

Rogaly, Ben, Massey, Deeptima and Rafique, Abdur (2009) Straw in the Elephant's Mouth? Social Protection for Temporary Work Migrants in West Bengal. In: Social Protection and Livelihoods: Marginalised Migrant Workers of India and Bangladesh. The University Press Ltd, Dhaka. ISBN 9847022000325

Rogaly, Ben (2008) Intensification of workplace regimes in British horticulture: the role of migrant workers. Population, Space and Place, 14 (6). pp. 497-510. ISSN 1544-8444

Rogaly, Ben (2008) Migrant Workers in the ILO's 'Global Alliance Against Forced Labour' Report: a critical appraisal. Third World Quarterly, 29 (7). pp. 1431-1447. ISSN 0143-6597