Migration Studies - PhD

Entry requirements

A good honours degree in the social sciences, an interest in the chosen topic area and a clear idea of your proposed thesis topic. In the case of research in health services and personal social services, we will also consider candidates with professional qualifications alone and/or relevant experience in the health service.

All applicants are considered on an individual basis and additional qualifications, professional qualifications and relevant experience may also be taken into account when considering applications. 

International students

Please see our International website for entry requirements by country and other relevant information. Due to visa restrictions, international fee-paying students cannot study part-time unless undertaking a distance or blended-learning programme with no on-campus provision.

English language entry requirements

The University requires all non-native speakers of English to reach a minimum standard of proficiency in written and spoken English before beginning a postgraduate degree. Certain subjects require a higher level.

For detailed information see our English language requirements web pages. 

Need help with English?

Please note that if you are required to meet an English language condition, we offer a number of pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes through Kent International Pathways.

Fees

The 2020/21 annual tuition fees for this programme are:

• Home/EU full-time £4407
• International full-time £16200
• Home/EU part-time £2204
• International part-time £8100

For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.

For students continuing on this programme fees will increase year on year by no more than RPI + 3% in each academic year of study except where regulated.* If you are uncertain about your fee status please contact information@kent.ac.uk

Additional costs

General additional costs

Find out more about general additional costs that you may pay when studying at Kent. 

Funding

Search our scholarships finder for possible funding opportunities. You may find it helpful to look at both:

• University and external funds
• Scholarships specific to the academic school delivering this programme.

Research areas

The School and its Social Policy component have several research units which act as a focus for postgraduate students working within those areas. Other research interests within the School have been grouped under certain headings for guidance. However, there is a degree of overlap between groups and your research project does not have to fall neatly within any one of them.

Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS)

The Centre for Health Services Studies has a strong record in attracting research grants from the National Institute for Health Research, European Union Framework Programme, ESRC, Department of Health, as well as local health authorities and trusts. It is a designated NIHR Research Design Support Service. Particular areas of expertise include pragmatic trials, risk assessment and management, care of vulnerable adults including older people, and public health.

Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements

The Centre was established in 1992 in order to consolidate Kent’s leading position in the study in Britain of social and political movements. The Centre is actively involved in international networks of social movement researchers through its participation in the Erasmus network on ‘Social movements, conflict and political action’ and through its members’ activity in the relevant research committees of the International Sociological Association, the European Sociological Association, and the European Consortium for Political Research.

Civil Society, the Third Sector and the Centre for Philanthropy

The School has a strong and growing focus on the meanings, behaviours, resources and roles of civil society. Our interests in these areas focus on civil society and NGOs at both national and international levels: we analyse its contributions across a variety of fields, including environmental action, philanthropy, international development and social welfare; we engage with both contemporary and historic dimensions of key issues; and we deploy a range of disciplinary and methodological tools, drawing on researchers’ backgrounds in sociology, social policy and policy analysis.

Dedicated to an understanding of the social processes and cultural experiences by which people acquire moral dispositions to care for others, the Centre for Philanthropy offers a focal point for much of this work. Research is conducted into the ways in which our capacity for feelings are socially cultivated, corporately structured, politically mediated and economically expressed. The School is also linked to the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), collaborating with the University of Birmingham on third sector theory and policy analysis.

Cross-national and European Social Policy

Using the framework of studying different welfare regimes, academic staff research a wide range of topics, while postgraduate students conduct research projects in every part of the world. Many of these projects involve overseas students making comparative studies involving their own country and European or UK services. The work of academic staff has resulted in a wide range of policy research related to Europe. Recent cross-national work has included projects examining home care services for older people, formal and informal social care systems, institutional change and the future of welfare reform, industrial relations, housing and community activism. Other interests include globalisation and welfare, and subsidiarity and convergence. Current or recent thesis topics include: democratisation and social policy in Korea; youth homelessness in Greece and the UK.

Health, Social Care and Health Studies

Present studies cover a range of issues within the fields of health services, social work and health policy. Particular interests include health care organisation and policy; risk assessment and management; primary care; public and user views of health care; health inequalities; occupational therapy; care work in health and social care; adoption; foster care; adult attachment theory; mental health; child protection; body work; psychoanalysis; race, ethnicity and health. Current or recent thesis topics include: women’s health in Uzbekistan; improving men’s health: the role of healthy living centres; women, the body and madness. This group hosts the national co-ordinator of the Research Development Initiative in Social Work.

Kent Crime and Justice Centre (KCJC)

KCJC is a collaboration of senior researchers at the University of Kent, based in the School, the Personal Social Services Research Unit and Kent Law School. It works in partnership with Kent Youth Offending Service and other criminal justice and non-governmental organisations. The core members have a multidisciplinary background, which includes sociology, economics, law and statistics, and expertise in sophisticated quantitative techniques, economic modelling and qualitative methods.

Centre for Child Protection

The team at the Centre for Child Protection is leading the way in developing new and innovative ways to deliver training and opportunities for simulated role play for professional development. The serious game concept offers a safe medium to explore and reflect upon child protection assessment. It offers professionals, at all stages of their careers, a unique way to evaluate real-life situations.

The first in the series of games, Rosie 2 promotes the theme of inter-professional practice by exploring the boundaries and challenges of a joint visit to the
family by a health visitor and social worker. Rosie 2 was followed by Visiting Elliot which explores a visit to a sex offender in the community. Zak, the third game in the series, focuses on an aspect of internet grooming.

The Centre for Child Protection’s series of serious game simulations provide research-based case studies and the opportunities to explore the complex dynamics involved in making professional assessments and decisions in these contexts.

Personal Social Services Research Unit

The PSSRU is the largest social services research unit in the UK, and operates at three sites: the University of Kent, the London School of Economics and the University of Manchester. Facilities include the Griffiths Library of Community Care, a reference library of more than 10,000 books, journals and other literature linked to the Unit’s field of study. Research focuses on needs, resources and outcomes in health and social care: major concerns are resourcing, equity and efficiency from the perspective of users, agencies and others. The Unit has developed a distinctive analytical framework called the ‘production of welfare approach’ to illuminate this research.

Race, Ethnicity and Religion

Though socially and discursively constructed, ‘race’ continues to be a key basis of social division and identification in British society, across Europe, and globally. Not only do many disparate ethnic minority groups continue to identify along ethnic, racial and religious lines, but ethnicity and race continue to shape a variety of outcomes, such as employment, educational attainment and senses of ‘belonging’. In this sense, ‘race’ and the recognition of difference continues to matter and is a key element in the School’s research interests.

Risk, ‘Risk Society’ and Risk Management

The critical analysis of risk and perceptions of risk have become central issues in the sociology of the ‘risk society’ and this is an important focus of activity in the School. Staff research includes work on health risks and their management, the implications of attitudes and behaviour concerning risk for the welfare state, the development of a culture of risk and anxiety, moral panics, risk and crime, risk and the life course, suffering and the perceptions of new communications technology.

Social and Public Policy, Sociology and the Body

Issues concerned with the body and embodiment have become core to the social sciences over the last 25 years, and the interests of this Group are dedicated to advancing this interdisciplinary field. Present and recent projects undertaken by Group members have revolved around: the development of corporeal realism; the sociology of suffering; the body in community care; the body in health and social care; clothing, the body and ageing; and the study of body pedagogics, as a new approach to the study of culture and society. The Group hosts the co-convenor of the British Sociological Association Study Group Ageing, the Body and Society.

Tizard Centre

The Tizard Centre runs an annual seminar series where staff or guest lecturers present the results of research or highlight recent developments in the field of social care. The Jim Mansell Memorial Lecture invites public figures or distinguished academics to discuss topics that could interest a wider audience. The Centre also publishes the Tizard Learning Disability Review (in conjunction with Emerald Publishing) to provide a source of
up-to-date information for professionals and carers.

The Tizard Centre provides consultancy to organisations in the statutory and independent sectors, both nationally and internationally, in diversified areas such as service assessment, person-centred approaches, active support and adult protection. The Centre also teaches a range of short courses, often in conjunction with other organisations.

Work, Employment and Economic Life

Interest in the issues surrounding work stretches across SSPSSR and current projects focus on work identity and meaning; work/life balance; age, generation and employment; visual representation of work; deindustrialisation; organisational sociology; gender, ethnicity and class at work; historiography of work sociology; moral economy; workplace ethnography and oral histories.

Staff research interests

Kent’s world-class academics provide research students with excellent supervision. The academic staff in this school and their research interests are shown below. You are strongly encouraged to contact the school to discuss your proposed research and potential supervision prior to making an application. Please note, it is possible for students to be supervised by a member of academic staff from any of Kent’s schools, providing their expertise matches your research interests. Use our ‘find a supervisor’ search to search by staff member or keyword.

Full details of staff research interests can be found on the School's website.

Professor Michael Calnan : Professor of Medical Sociology

Professor Simon Coulton : Professor of Health Services Research

Professor Frank Furedi : Professor of Sociology

Professor Chris Hale : Professor of Criminology

Professor Roger Matthews : Professor of Criminology

Professor Alisoun J Milne : Professor of Social Gerontology and Social Work

Professor Stephen Peckham : Professor of Health Policy; Director of CHSS

Professor Christopher Rootes : Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology

Professor David Shemmings : Professor of Child Protection Research

Professor Miri Song : Professor of Sociology

Professor Tim Strangleman : Professor of Sociology

Professor Alex Stevens : Professor of Criminal Justice; Deputy Head of School

Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby : Research Professor of Social Policy

Professor Julia Twigg : Professor of Social Policy and Sociology

Professor Sarah Vickerstaff : Professor of Work and Employment

Professor Jenny Billings : Professor of Applied Health Research

Professor Adam Burgess : Professor of Risk Research

Dr Derek Kirton : Reader in Social Policy and Social Work

Professor Ellie Lee : Professor of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research

Dr Kate Bradley : Senior Lecturer in Social History and Social Policy

Dr Simon Cottee : Senior Lecturer in Criminology

Dr Jeremy Kendall : Senior Lecturer in Social Policy

Dr Anne Logan : Senior Lecturer in Social Science

Dr Dawn Lyon : Senior Lecturer in Sociology

Dr Balihar Sanghera : Senior Lecturer in Sociology; Director of Graduate Studies (Taught)

Dr Joanne Warner : Senior Lecturer in Social Work; Director of Studies for MA Social Work

Dr Ben Baumberg Geiger : Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy

Dr Heejung Chung : Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy

Dr Lavinia Mitton : Senior Lecturer in Social Policy

Study support

Graduate School

The Graduate School ensures that the academic and social interests of postgraduate students are provided for within the University. It works alongside academic schools to support and develop internationally disctinctive, exciting and innovative programmes of study that combine academic excellence with an exceptional student experience and appropriate learning resources through the provision of:

• high-quality postgraduate facilities
• a supportive environment for the intellectual interests of our postgraduates
• an excellent Researcher Development Programme
• a strong framework of specialist support for our postgraduates across the University
• the cultivation of external links with Research Councils, graduate schools and other organisations, both nationally and internationally, to provide further funding and study opportunities.

For more details see our Graduate School page.

Postgraduate resources

The atmosphere in the School is informal and friendly and has at its centre a lively and diverse postgraduate community. The weekly staff/postgraduate seminar series is designed to introduce you to the work of major scholars from the UK and abroad, and there is also a wide range of other seminar and workshop series each academic year.

Our postgraduate students are given 24-hour access to dedicated office space within the department and are able to take advantage of excellent library and computing facilities. Where appropriate, research students are encouraged to expand their experience by teaching part-time in the School.

Dynamic publishing culture

Staff publish regularly and widely in journals, conference proceedings and books. Among others, they have recently contributed to: Journal of Social Policy; Journal of European Social Policy; Voluntas; Social Policy and Administration; Social Policy and Society. Details of recently published books can be found within our staff research interests.

Researcher Development Programme

Kent's Graduate School co-ordinates the Researcher Development Programme for research students, which includes workshops focused on research, specialist and transferable skills. The programme is mapped to the national Researcher Development Framework and covers a diverse range of topics, including subject-specific research skills, research management, personal effectiveness, communication skills, networking and teamworking, and career management skills.