Renzo Szkwarok

Renzo Szkwarok (Shk-va-rok) is PhD student at Newcastle University researching practices of border control in the UK. Positioned across social, cultural and political geography, his thesis investigates Derwentside Immigration Removal Centre in County Durham.

Specifically, he is interested in how local people make meaning of, interact with, and navigate new forms of border enforcement, and the impact this enforcement has on ideas of migration and belonging in relation to histories of global colonialism, regional deindustrialisation, and local carceral histories.

He is also interested in how resistance forms in the face of hostile immigration policy and how groups work together across geographies to realise more just futures based on solidarity.