What is stigma? Who does it serve? And how does it shape a world broken by poverty, prejudice, and injustice? Welcome to The Stigma Conversations, with leading activist sociologist Imogen Tyler. Join Imogen as she meets inspirational academics, activists and frontline workers to show that while stigma is certainly about feelings and experiences, it’s also about power, politics and history. We are in a state of emergency, and we need to take action, now.

Through intimate and urgent conversations on subjects including poverty and austerity, racism and Brexit, and the ongoing “war on woke”, Imogen and guests show that to truly tackle stigma we need to ask big questions about how it is produced and what its history is. Only then can we start to call out the systems that divide and dehumanise us – and ask for better. Indeed, as The Stigma Conversations shows – with each episode closing with a thoughtful short essay from Imogen – the story of stigma is also one of subversion, solidarity and hope.

Click ‘subscribe’ or ‘follow’ now in the podcast app that you use, to be sure that you hear every episode. Read more about Imogen and her book, Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality. Find out more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review.

Series credits:

Host: Imogen Tyler
Executive and Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music: Bruce Bennett
Artwork: Bruce Bennett

What’s missing from mainstream thinking on stigma? And why must we confront power, politics and history if we are to fight dehumanisation and shame?

Imogen Tyler, author of "Stigma, The Machinery of Inequality", tells friend and fellow sociologist Michaela Benson how her thinking on stigma evolved through the time of Brexit, the “migrant crisis” and Trump – and why stigma power is alive in the widening “war on woke”. They discuss the need to celebrate movements and thinkers – from Du Bois to Black Power – long neglected by ‘stigma studies’. And they consider the deep entanglement of stigma with migration – from colonialism to Brexit, to the dehumanisation of asylum seekers.

Plus: how can we amplify marginalised voices without reproducing the stigma they face? And how did Imogen’s experience as a working-class student lead to her fascination with the subject – and to a tattoo?

Read more about Michaela Benson and The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review

Note: This episode was recorded in Winter 2022, after Manston processing centre was emptied. Read more about the death of Hussein Haseeb Ahmed at Manston here. You can also read the coroner’s report of Nov 2022 into the death of Awaab Ishaak in Rochdale, plus this statement from Awaab Ishaak’s family, and this from Rochdale Boroughwide Housing

Credits

Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Michaela Benson
Executive and Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Guest: Michaela Benson
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music and Artwork: Bruce Bennett

Episode resources:

• Shame lives on the Eyelids in Imogen’s book Stigma: the Machinery of Inequality - (2020)
• The Condition of the Working Class in England - Friedrich Engels (1845)
• Never Again: Refusing race and salvaging the human - The Holberg Lecture given by Paul Gilroy (2019)
• Du Bois: Addressing the Colour Line - Gurminder K Bhambra, The Connected Sociologies Curriculum Project.
• From Stigma Power to Black Power - Imogen’s graphic essay with Charlotte Bailey (2019)
• Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity - Erving Goffman (1963)

From Michaela Benson:

• Who Do We Think We Are? – Podcast
• Read more about Michaela’s research on Brexit, Migration, Citizenship and Borders

Find extended reading lists and learn more at The Sociological Review

Take Action!

Citizens Advice
Poverty Truth Network

Stigma is nothing new. In Ancient Greece the word meant ‘tattoo’ and referred to writing on people’s skin as a means of punishment and control. Recognising that, says sociologist Imogen Tyler, is a game changer; it means we can start thinking about how stigma literally marks and divides us - and start thinking about how to resist.

Here, Imogen hears from sociologist Alice Bloch about her research with descendants of Holocaust survivors who have chosen to tattoo themselves with the numbers inked on their ancestors at Auschwitz. Such an act, she says, is about love - and resistance to stigmatisation. Alice also reflects on her work with adult children of refugees - and how stigma makes silences that weave through generations. Plus: how stigmatising undocumented migrants serves capitalism, but makes for a poorer society.

A powerful conversation about stigma and subversion, solidarity and resistance.

Read more about Alice here. Her research on descendants of Holocaust survivors and the concentration camp tattoo is funded by a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research grant in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

Credits

Host: Imogen Tyler
Guest: Prof. Alice Bloch
Executive & Development Producer: Alice Bloch
Project Lead: Imogen Tyler
Project Officer: Danielle Galway
Sound Engineer: David Crackles
Music & Artwork: Bruce Bennett

Episode Resources:

By Alice Bloch and co-authors:

• How Memory Survives: Descendants of Auschwitz Survivors and the Progenic Tattoo (2022)
• Talking about the Past, Locating It in the Present: The Second Generation from Refugee Backgrounds Making Sense of Their Parents' Narratives, Narrative Gaps and Silences (2018)
• Inter-generational Transnationalism: The Impact of Refugee Backgrounds on Second Generation with Shirin Hirsch (2018)
• Living on the Margins : Undocumented Migrants in a Global Britain with Sonia McKay (2016)

Further reading :

• The Stigma Machine of the Border in Stigma: The Machinery of Inequality Imogen Tyler (2020)
• If This Is a Man Primo Levi (1959)
• The Generation of Postmemory : Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust Marianne Hirsch (2012)
• Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language Eva Hoffman (2008)
• Modernity and the Holocaust Zygmunt Bauman (2000)
• The British Citizenship, Race, and Rights lectures Connected Sociologies

Find extended reading lists and learn more about The Stigma Conversations at The Sociological Review