Role
Dr Tom Vickers is employed at NTU as an Associate Professor in Sociology, combining research with teaching and supervision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He is Director of the GMB-NTU Work Futures Observatory and Co-Coordinator of the international Ecologies of Labour network.
Career overview
Prior to coming to NTU in 2015 Tom held posts at Northumbria University, most recently as Senior Lecturer alongside a faculty-wide role coordinating research impact. Before this he worked at Durham University, where he was lead Research Associate on a large ESRC-funded project. He completed his doctoral studies at Durham in 2010, funded by an ESRC 1+3 scholarship, and is a professionally qualified youth and community worker.
Research areas
Tom Vickers has wide ranging experience of research and evaluation projects, employing qualitative and mixed methods. His work examines contemporary and future relations of work, employment and work practices, with a particular focus on ecology, precarity, and the role of borders and migration. Current and recent projects include:
- Digital Mediations in the Workplace (DigiMed): Implications for wellbeing, equality and diversity (with Jereme Snook and Michael Whittall) (2023-2026)
- Explorations of working whilst studying and anticipating graduation from university (with Ricky Gee and Sharon Hutchings) (2022-ongoing)
- A Logitudinal Evaluation of the Hope Project Legal Service and Integrated Services for Destitute Asylum Seekers (with Helen O'Nions, Blerina Kellezi, Ernest Acha, Nisan Alici, Irene Sacchetti, Selbi Durdiyeva and Benedict Ekow Ocran) (2021-2025)
- Private Hire and Hackney Taxi Drivers' Work (with David Dahill, Dominic Holland, Daniel King, Sharon Hutchings, Laura Garius and Jack Rendall) (2018-2020)
- Unfulfilled? – Exploring work and employment in warehousing and logistics spaces (with Dominic Holland) (2020-2021)
- The Study of the Need of Legal and Immigration Advice for Asylum Seekers and People with Insecure Immigration Status (ASIIS) in Nottingham City (with Helen O'Nions and David Dahill) (2018-2020)
- Research into carers within seldom heard communities in Nottinghamshire (with Chak Kwan Chan, Adam Barnard and Dominic Holland) (2016)
Tom has received research funding from the ESRC, British Academy, Leverhulme Trust, the NIHR School for Social Care Research, Hope Projects, Nottinghamshire County Council, and Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum. His work has been published in peer reviewed journals including Critical Social Policy, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Area, Mobilities, Time & Society, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Critical Sociology, Social Policy & Administration, the European Journal of Cultural Studies, and the British Journal of Social Work, and in non-academic publications including The Conversation, Futures of Work, LocalGov.co.uk, Discover Society, Open Democracy, the Runnymede Bulletin, and the Lincolnshire Echo. His work has been reported on by the Financial Times, Telegraph, BBC, Indus News, All Now, Union News, East Midlands Business Link, Private Hire and Taxi Monthly, and Nottingham Post.
Tom welcomes applications for PhD supervision in any of the following areas:
- ecologies of labour
- work and employment
- precarity
- capitalism
- Marxism
- asylum/refugee studies
- migration and border studies
- state welfare
- social work
- imperialism
- racism and anti-racism
- volunteering
- activism
- public sociology
Opportunities arise to carry out postgraduate research towards an MPhil / PhD in the areas identified above. Further information may be obtained on the NTU Research Degrees website https://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/research-degrees-at-ntu
Current and previous PhD topics Tom has supervised include:
- To explore the impacts of technological transformations on industrial workers, both blue- and white-collar, in the automotive sector in Turkey
- Examining context, causality, and outcome variations in public sector accountability reforms in selected Commonwealth member States: A realist study of Open Government Partnership (OGP)
- Selfless service: Exploring the impact of the custom of langar and how this corresponds with the many meanings of seva in Sikhism within the context of the cost of living crisis
- Afghan Mothers’ Narratives in the UK: A Case Study of Muslim Mothering, Identity, and Agency in Diaspora
- Polish return migration: Ethnic nostalgia or class response for the Brexit and global neoliberal crisis?
- Precarious Work, Social Care and the Crisis of Capital Accumulation
- The Impacts of the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts on Health and Access to Health Care
- Human Rights and the [right to the] city: human rights challenges and claims in oil-extracting cities in the Global South
- Policing in Partnership: Are organic police partnerships more effective than mandated police partnerships?
- Cosmopolitanism and asylum seekers in the European Union - Implementation of the asylum acquis in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom from 1999-2015. Are EU Member States fulfilling their international and EU obligations?
- Children from refugee and asylum seeking families: can their relationships with children and families of host families enhance neighbourhood relations within dispersal areas?
- Social capital networks and ties in a restrictive labour market: The experience of Romanian migrants in the North East of England
External activity
Tom Vickers is a founder and Co-Coordinator of the international Ecologies of Labour network. He has prior experience on the Editorial Board of the journal Sociological Research Online, as an Associate Consultant for the Learning and Work Institute, as a Fellow of the NIHR School for Social Care Research, and as an active participant in movements for social and economic justice.
Sponsors and collaborators
Recent sponsors and collaborators include:
- GMB Union
- CIPD
- Grange Farm
- Greenheart
- Hope Projects
- United Private Hire Drivers union
- Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Refugee Forum
- Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union
Publications
Books
Vickers, T. (2019) Borders, Migration and Class in an Age of Crisis: Producing Immigrants and Workers. Bristol University Press.
Vickers, T. (2012) Refugees, Capitalism and the British State: implications for social workers, volunteers and activists. Farnham: Ashgate.
Articles in peer-review journals
Vickers, T. (2021) Activist conceptualisations at the migration-welfare nexus: racial capitalism, austerity and the hostile environment. Critical Social Policy. DOI: 10.1177/0261018320948026.
Clark, I., Lawton, C., Stevenson, C., Vickers, T. and Dahill, D. (2020) A 'place based' approach to work and employment: the end of reciprocity, ordinary working families and 'giggers' in a place. Economic and Industrial Democracy, DOI: 10.1177/0143831X20946374.
Vickers, T., J. Clayton, H. Davison, L. Hudson, M. A. Cañadas, P. Biddle and S. Lilley (2019) Dynamics of precarity among ‘new migrants’: exploring the worker–capital relation through mobilities and mobility power, Mobilities, DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2019.1611028.
Clayton, J. and T. Vickers (2019) The contingencies of purposeful co-production: Researching new migrant employment experiences in the North East of England. Area. DOI: 10.1111/area.12409.
Chan, C. K., T. Vickers, A. Barnard (2019) Meaning Through Caregiving: A Qualitative Study of the Experiences of Informal Carers, The British Journal of Social Work, DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcz039
Clayton, J. and T. Vickers (2018) Temporal tensions: EU citizen migrants, asylum seekers and refugees navigating dominant temporalities of work in England. Time & Society. DOI: 10.1177/0961463X18778466.
Vickers, T. and Rutter, A. (2018) Disposable labour, passive victim, active threat: migrant/non-migrant othering in three British television documentaries. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 21(4): 486-501. DOI: 10.1177/1367549416682968.
Vickers, T. (2016) The potential and limitations of collective resistance arising from volunteering by asylum seekers and refugees in Northern England, Critical Sociology 42(3): 437-454. DOI: 10.1177/0896920514526623.
Vickers, T. (2016). Geflüchtete, Kapitalismus und der Staat: Die Wurzeln der Unterdrückung von Flüchtlingen und Schlussfolgerungen für die politische Aktion, Marxistische-Blätter, (1-16): 58-66.
Vickers, T. and L. Dominelli (2015) Students’ Involvement in International Humanitarian Aid: Learning from student responses to the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka, British Journal of Social Work, 45(6): 1905-1922. DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bcu052.
Vickers, T. (2014) Developing an Independent Anti-Racist Model for Asylum Rights Organising in England. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37(8): 1427-1447. DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2012.734391.
Vickers, T., G. Craig and K. Atkin (2013) Addressing ethnicity in social care research, Social Policy & Administration, 47(3): 310-326. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00851.x.
Book chapters
Vickers T. (2019) Immigration and Imperialism. In: Ness I., Cope Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Vickers, T. (2019) Marxist Social Work: An international and historical perspective, in S. A. Webb (Ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work.
Vickers, T. (2015) The contribution of UK asylum policy to conditions for the exploitation of migrant labour, in L. Waite, H. Lewis, G. Craig, and K. Skrivanova (Eds.) Vulnerability, exploitation and migrants: Insecure work in a globalised economy. Palgrave MacMillan.
Vickers, T. (2015) Marxist Approaches to Social Work, in the International Encyclopedia of Social & Behavioral Sciences (2nd Edition) Elsevier.
Vickers, T. (2014) Migration, Political Engagement and the State: A case study of immigrants and communists in 1930s South Tyneside in the UK, in L. Dominelli and M. Moosa-Mitha (Eds.) Reconfiguring Citizenship: Social Exclusion and Diversity within Inclusive Citizenship Practices. Ashgate.
Journal Special Issue (Guest Editor)
Vickers, T. (2015) Humanitarian Interventions, special issue of International Social Work (58)5.
Reports
Vickers, T., O’Nions, H., Kellezi, B., Acha, E., Durdiyeva, S. (2022) Providing Legal Advice to Destitute Asylum Seekers who have Exhausted Appeal Rights: Evaluation of the Hope Projects (West Midlands) Legal Service, Report 1. NTU.
Holland, H., Vickers, T. (2021) Unfulfilled? Setting a Research Agenda for Work, Labour and Employment in E-Commerce Logistics Jobs. Working Paper. NTU.
Holland, D., Vickers, T. (2021) Unfulfilled? Evidence Review on Work, Labour and Employment in Amazon’s Fulfilment Centres. NTU.
Vickers, T., Dahill, D. and Holland, D. (2020). Decent and good work in the platform economy: private hire and taxi work in Nottingham. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University.
Grigolo, M., Vickers, T., Hutchings, S. Wakefield, J.R.H., and Bowe, M. (2019). Economic and social rights in Nottingham: work, housing, food. Nottingham: Nottingham Trent University.
Vickers, T., J. Clayton, , H. Davison, L. Hudson, M.A. Cañadas, , P. Biddle, S. Lilley, G. Fletcher and M. Chantkowski] (2016) 'New migrants' in the North East workforce: final report. Nottingham Trent University.
Chan, C.K., A. Barnard, T. Vickers and D.A. Holland (2016) Research on Carers within Seldom-Heard Communities: Final Report. Nottingham Trent University.
Vickers, T., G. Craig and K. Atkin (2012) Research with black and minority ethnic people using social care services. NIHR School for Social Care Research Methods Review 11.
For a full list of Tom Vickers' publications see link below.
Press expertise
- Work and employment
- Gig work and the platform economy
- Precarity
- Asylum and immigration
- Activism and social movements
- Public Sociology
- Marxism