Global Displacement in the 21st Century: Towards a Theoretical Framework

Abstract: Phil Cole's book, Global Displacement in the 21st Century: Towards and Ethical Framework, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2022. This talk draws out the main themes and challenges Cole raises for political theory, and develops them further. This work explores challenges for Global North academics in addressing the experiences of the forcibly displaced and constructing an ethical framework that speaks to those experiences. This means confronting the issues of white supremacism in ‘western’ thought, and of privilege and positionality when working on these questions.

About the speaker: Phil Cole teaches Politics and International Relations at the University of the West of England, Bristol. He was awarded a British Academy Research Fellowship in 2019 to work on this project, resulting in a book published in 2022. His most recent publication is “Displacement and Human Security,” published on the Oxford Handbook on Human Security in 2026 ). Previous work includes Philosophies of Exclusion: Liberal Political Theory and Immigration (EUP 2000), and, with Christopher Heath Wellman, Debating the Ethics of Immigration: Is There a Right to Exclude? (OUP 2011).