Professor Catherine Barnard, Dr Fiona Costello and Sarah Fraser Butlin's book Low-Paid EU Migrant Workers: The House, The Street, The Town has been awarded the Best Book Prize 2025 by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES).
Low-Paid EU Migrant Workers: The House, The Street, The Town offers an in-depth exploration of the lives of EU migrant workers in the UK following Brexit and COVID-19. Drawing on a longitudinal study, the book delves into the legal problems migrant workers face and sheds much-needed light on the hidden interactions between the law and communities around issues such as employment, housing, welfare and health. Through personal narratives and insights gathered from interviews, it reveals how (clustered) legal problems arise, are resolved and often bypass formal legal resolution pathways.
The winning book is published by Bristol University Press where it is available to purchase or read online via open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
The UACES Best Book Prize is awarded annually for the book that has made the most substantial and original contribution to knowledge in the area of contemporary European Studies. The prize was awarded at the UACES 55th Annual Conference in Liverpool on 1 September, and was collected by Fiona who was a guest at the event. The conference theme was, fittingly, 'Europe's resilience and transformation in a rapidly changing world'.
Responding to the award, Catherine said:
"We are hugely grateful to UACES for recognising our book. We owe a significant debt of gratitude to all of those who shared their experiences with us and to GYROS, the charity in Great Yarmouth with whom we worked very closely. Their participation has enabled us to tell a story of poverty, migration and the absence of law enforcement in a town suffering from considerable economic disadvantage. "