Ana Aliverti-Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law

Ana Aliverti wins the prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in Law. The PLP is awarded to scholars who have made and continue to make significant and original contributions to knowledge in their field of research, and who have influenced their field sufficiently to have had an international impact. In 2017, up to 30 awards were made to UK-based outstanding research scholars within six subject areas. Ana won one of the five Prizes for Law.

The Prize will support Ana’s existing research on the novel configurations of law enforcement in a global age. She will spend the next two years researching police-immigration cooperation in domestic policing in the UK. The new policy emphasis on foreign nationals in British domestic policing has brought to the fore the role of the police in mediating belonging and shaping the boundaries of citizenship. Her new research will investigate how this iconic function of the police in delimiting civic inclusion is put to work in the everyday policing of global mobility. As the police are at the forefront of efforts to block, contain and channel through people on the move, their role as arbiters of membership acquires centrality while ideas about civil order and justice are reformulated. Simultaneously, global mobility policing legitimizes extraterritorial interventions and is determined by processes happening away from the territorial borders.

Despite the expansion of police-immigration cooperation in ordinary policing work and its potential for operating outside the remits of social justice, little empirical research has been hitherto conducted to document and scrutinize these significant changes. The Prize will contribute unique insight into new policing practices in highly diverse cities, while offering a novel and refreshing analysis of contemporary law enforcement amid growing public hostility about migration in Britain and elsewhere.