School of Social and Political Science

Background

Biographical Statement

Joel White is a writer and researcher based in Glasgow. He is involved with groups in the city that organise around mutual aid, migrant solidarity, prison abolition and anti-racism. His writing has appeared in Guardian, Wire, Tribune and the LRB blog. He co-runs the record label GLARC.

As of September 2025, Joel is a Wellcome Trust Early Careers Fellow at Edinburgh University, working on a project entitled: Archives of Care: Histories of Mental Health & Immigration Control in Scotland.

In June 2025 Joel released Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everday Solidarity, co-authored with Laura C Forster and published by Pluto Press

Joel has undertaken a wide range of qualitative research spanning anthropology, sociology and geography, with a focus on questions around friendship, care, the UK Border Regime, mental health, social movement history, prisons & immigration detention, ethnographic methodology and anti-racist activism. He has carried out extensive ethnographic and archival research in Canada/USA and the UK, combined with active engagement in campaigning and activist groups.

Published writing & Other Outputs

Books

• Friends in Common: Radical Friendship and Everyday Solidarities 
  By Laura C. Forster and Joel White - June 2025  

Academic Publications

• Brewer, H., Kemp, T. Amis, B.P., & White, J. (2024) ‘“Shut them down”: non-reformist reforms in anti-detention organizing’ in Sara Riva, Simon Campbell, Brian Whitener & Kathryn Medien (Eds). Border Abolition Now.  Pluto Press
• White. J, Hopkins P, & Finlay, R. (2024) 'Young Muslims in Scotland: politics, racism, and the media'. Report
• Hopkins P, White J. (2024). ‘Islamophobia’ in The Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Springer
• White, J. (2023) ‘Becoming complicit in the UK hostile environment’, in Melissa Demian, Mattia Fumanti and Christos Lynteris (Eds). Responsibility, Association of Social Anthropology Monograph Series. Routledge.
• White, J. (2022) ‘Vicarious strength: friends and befriending in UK immigration detention’ Migrant Mobilities Blog Bristol, University of Bristol, April 2022.
• White, J. (2020) ‘Whose law is it anyway?’ Nadine El Enany’s (B)ordering Britain, review essay, Radical Philosophy 2.09 (Winter)

Other Writing

• From Scotland to Gaza: A SCALP and Netpol Report on the policing of Palestine solidarity protests in Scotland - Co-authored for SCALP / Netpol with Rosie Thompson & Martha O’Carroll, Sept 2025
• Resources for Democracy! A People's History of Bradford Resource Centre  - Written as part of exhibition & film project, Summer 2025.
• Counterflows on Paper Zine - Editorial (with Helen Charman and Emmie McLuskey) for Counterflows Festival : 2021 Edition, 2022 Edition, 2025 Edition
• White, J. (2022). ‘These are our neighbours’. London Review of Books Blog, May 2022
• Songs about sewage and space travel? It's prog-folk band Hen Ogledd. The Guardian, September 2020.
• 'We’re the explicit Vengaboys’: meet Bad Boy Chiller Crew, Bradford's bassline stars. The Guardian, July, 2020.
• White, J. (2020-21) ‘Criminalising Solidarity’, ‘The Border Business’, ‘Priti Patel’s Asylum Prisons',
  ‘The Fight for Asylum Seeker Rights Behind Glasgow’s Protests’, selected articles, Tribune Magazine.
   

Film and Animation

• You Don't Know What You Don't Know, Do You? - A Film by Adam Lewis Jacob.  Produced by Joel White   
• '10 ways to tackle racism at school'  Scripting: Aaliya, Adam, Chawan, Isabel, and Hannah (all of Shawlands Academy) in collaboration with Dr Joel White and Professor Peter Hopkins. Animation and illustration: Christian Wright,  Kaleidoscope CFA. Voiceover - Maryam Almhameed

Events and Workshops

•  Resources For Democracy: A People's History of Bradford Resource Centre. Producer. Summer, 2025
• Four Endings to Begin Event at Arika Festival - with Masa Nazzal, River MacAskill, Hannah Proctor & Gracie Mae Bradley. Co-Producer. November, 2024
• Border Abolition Conference 2021  - Co-organizer