University of Sussex academic co-edits new Oxford Handbook reshaping migration scholarship
By: Maria Andreou
Last updated: Tuesday, 3 November 2026
Sarah’s involvement in the Handbook builds on her wider contributions to migration scholarship.
The Oxford Handbook of Intersectional Approaches to Migration, Gender, and Sexuality (2026).
A new approach to migration research
Associate Professor in Geography Dr Sarah Scuzzarello is among the co-editors of a new scholarly volume published by Oxford University Press, The Oxford Handbook of Intersectional Approaches to Migration, Gender, and Sexuality (2026), which aims to transform how migration is studied.
Bringing together 37 chapters by scholars based in Asia, South and North America, the Middle East and Europe, the Handbook provides a comprehensive guide to rethinking gender, migration and sexuality through an intersectional lens.
Connecting migration, gender and sexuality
It makes two distinctive contributions. First, it brings perspectives from different parts of the world into conversation within a single volume.
“Migration scholarship has long been dominated by Western anglophone institutions, frameworks and publishing practices. The Handbook works against that grain, building a genuine dialogue across multiple sites of knowledge production rather than treating Global South scholarship as a case study for Northern theory,” says Sarah.
Second, it puts sexuality at the core of migration research, rather than treating it as secondary to gender, race or class. It positions queer and trans mobilities, sexual migration and the governance of sexuality as core to understanding why people move and how they are received.
Sarah explains: “Running through the interventions is a commitment to intersectionality not as rhetoric but as method and praxis – a set of analytical tools for tracing how gender, sexuality, race, class, legal status and other axes of power intersect across different contexts.
“We started from the conviction that you can’t really understand migration without taking intersectionality seriously, and that requires moving beyond a single perspective.”
Bringing together expertise from across continents
Co-edited by Professor Gökçe Yurdakul (Humboldt University of Berlin), Professor Jean Beaman (CUNY Graduate Centre), Professor Liza Mügge (University of Amsterdam), Dr Sarah Scuzzarello (University of Sussex) and Dr Sirijit Sunanta (Mahidol University), the Handbook reflects a sustained commitment to international and interdisciplinary collaboration.
“Bringing scholars from different parts of the world and different intellectual traditions into conversation was at the heart of what we wanted to achieve with this Handbook.
“This collaborative approach is particularly important at a time when migration is politically contested, and gender and queer scholarship faces mounting scrutiny.”
Sarah’s involvement in the Handbook builds on her wider contributions to migration scholarship. At Sussex, she’s an affiliated researcher at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research (SCMR), she is the in-house Associate Editor of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (JEMS) and, since 2019, she has co-chaired the IMISCOE Standing Committee on Gender and Sexuality in Migration Research (GenSeM).
You can read more about Sarah’s work and take a look at The Oxford Handbook of Intersectional Approaches to Migration, Gender, and Sexuality.