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Intro -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Infamous Creatures -- Chapter 1 Locked Away, Sent Away, Launched into Eternity - Punishment in Victorian England -- Chapter 2 Got to Pick a Pocket or Two? - Crimes of Property -- Chapter 3 The Brutal Side of the Gentle Sex - Violent Women -- Chapter 4 The Demon Drink and the Great Social Evil - Challenging Public Order -- Conclusion -- For the Intrigued Reader -- Index.

The popular imagination of marriage migration has been influenced by stories of marriage of convenience, of forced marriage, trafficking and of so-called mail-order brides. This book presents a uniquely global view of an expanding field that challenges these and other stereotypes of cross-border marriage.

An extensive, and growing, global literature on the experience of people subject to migration control shows how state actions to "manage" migration and human mobility results in poverty and destitution. There is also a large body of evidence indicating how neo-liberal policy, alongside deeply embedded structures of privilege and inequality lead to the economic deprivation of fully entitled, "citizen" populations. Despite the commonality of disadvantage between these two groups—migrants and citizens—the parallels in experience of structures that create and maintain their impoverishment have rarely been explored. Close attention to the stories told by people with lived experience of poverty, as citizens or as migrants, challenges the normative assumptions about belonging and entitlement, deservingness and opportunity that underpin policy-making on both migration and social inequality. This essay argues that listening to, and engaging with, the stories of people in poverty is an important corrective to normative ideas about who can benefit from state support. Focusing on the UK, my aim is to explore the position of people subject to migration control alongside others living in poverty—marginalized and made precarious not by displacement but by deprivation, stigma and punitive welfare systems. Paying close attention to the stories people tell cuts through the official, normative positioning of people as outsiders whether as foreigners or as marginalized citizens. Stories thus reveal the technologies of power and oppression at work in everyday settings. Drawing on concepts including Butler's ideas of grievability and Mbembe's necropolitics I reflect on how welfare management systems and the "so-called" hostile environment, reduce the capacity of migrants and others to act as purposeful human beings. I hope to reveal the technologies of power and oppression at work in everyday settings and will argue that careful, attentive listening to human stories can challenge the imposition of normative discourses on the voiceless and encourage narratives that embrace complexity.

How can grieving communities respond to public loss while also seizing the reflective and transformative potential inherent in moments of collective mourning? In this article, I explore this question by analyzing and critiquing fifty-seven of the official funeral speeches Barack Obama delivered during his presidency. I compare Obama's national eulogies to two ancient mourning traditions: the Homeric mode and the Athenian mode. I further argue that, like these ancient modes, Obama's eulogies may suppress critical thought, perpetuate us/them thinking, and prioritize individual interests above communal ties. I therefore propose and theorize the counter-eulogy, a thoughtful, critical, and self-reflective mode of official funeral rhetoric inspired by the counter-monument artistic movement and other alternative mourning practices. I analyze Obama's eulogy for Reverend Clementa Pinckney as an example of a counter-eulogy. In doing so, I illustrate how counter-eulogies preserve the ritual features of traditional national eulogies while also capturing the democratic potentiality inherent in moments of public grief.

American exceptionalism—i.e., the belief that the United States is chosen, superior to other nations, and tasked with a unique responsibility or mission—is often analyzed, studied, and critiqued as a singular and unified rhetorical tradition. In this dissertation, though, I argue that the American exceptionalist tradition is in fact conveyed through multiple and distinct rhetorical modes. More specifically, I distinguish between two types of American exceptionalism: accomplished exceptionalism, which is self-celebratory, complacent, and un-critical, and aspirational exceptionalism, which is self-critical, forward-looking, and ameliorative.Because most citizens, politicians, and thinkers understand and deploy exceptionalism in the accomplished sense, this dissertation focuses primarily on the form, substance, and effects of the lesser-known aspirational mode. The dissertation analyzes the political thought of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Baldwin—three figures who are not normally considered to be part of the American exceptionalist tradition. Through close readings of their speeches and writings, I show that each thinker articulates a philosophy and politics of aspirational exceptionalism. I also highlight the distinct aspirational citizenship practices that each thinker encourages and enables. In so doing, I challenge the widespread assumption that thinkers who criticize or condemn the American polity are, ipso facto, ineligible for exceptionalist status. Put differently, I show that America's radicals, critics, and apologists can (and do) speak in exceptionalist registers and may perhaps be exceptionalism's most sophisticated defenders.More broadly, though, I challenge and re-define what it means to be a "good" American citizen. If, as Charles Taylor argues, language shapes and influences individuals' orientation toward the world, then America's tendency to privilege accomplished exceptionalism while excluding aspirational exceptionalism threatens to create and shore up a society in which the accomplished mode's backward-looking, self-celebratory, and uncritical disposition is seen as the most correct and laudable way to enact citizenship. By identifying another form of exceptionalism (namely, aspirational exceptionalism) and re-claiming its title as such, I shed light on—and, by extension, activate—a different mode of American citizenship: one that is critical and reflective but equally (or perhaps more) commendable.

Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the United Kingdom approach adulthood knowing that they will be encouraged or even forced to return to their countries of birth. Drawing on a project that promoted voluntary return to Afghanistan, we use interviews with twelve young people, professionals working in the Home Office and in education, local authorities, and voluntary-sector agencies to describe a complex area of immigration policy. We show how the state's obligations as "corporate parent" clash with increasingly punitive migration controls and with growing political scrutiny of public spending. We propose education as a way to prepare young people for futures as global citizens in either country of settlement or of origin.