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Ben Rosher

@benrosher.bsky.social

3.4K followers 1.4K following 220 posts

Borders | ontosec | migration | citizenship

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Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · Nov 7

Hello, lots of new folk here.

I’m a political sociologist and I primarily research borders and migration.

Here are some recent(ish) publications:

academic.oup.com/ips/article/...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

dcubrexitinstitute.eu/2022/06/rebo...

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 14h

Pals! @nataliejester.bsky.social and @ubaspehlivan.bsky.social have launched the BISA Critical Alternatives for World Politics Working Group.

CAWP is an experimental, creative research space for IR. learn more here www.bisa.ac.uk/members/work...; here @cawpbisa.bsky.social and twitter at @cawpbisa

Critical Alternatives for World Politics (CAWP)

The Critical Alternatives for World Politics (CAWP) Working Group aims to foster a welcoming space for experimental, creative, and non-mainstream research and researchers at the margins of Internation...

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Centre for Cross Border Cooperation @crossborder.bsky.social · 3d

Our latest quarterly survey on North-South and East-West cooperation is open - and we would like to hear your thoughts on the current context for cooperation.
crossborder.ie/news/complet...
@cfni.bsky.social @communityfoundirl.bsky.social @benrosher.bsky.social @anthonysoares.bsky.social

Overhead photograph of someone sitting on a chair completing the Centre's survey on a laptop. The word SURVEY is included along with three ticks in red ink.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 7d

First day of school. I have my name on a door. And my own office. And a plant!

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Steve Peers @stevepeers.bsky.social · 9d

UK government to reintroduce maintenance grants (rather than loans) for students from the lowest income families
www.gov.uk/government/n...

Targeted maintenance grants for students to be reintroduced

Disadvantaged students studying priority courses will benefit from extra financial support to access and excel in higher education.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Zoe Gardner @zoejardiniere.bsky.social · 12d

Ok. They’ve pissed me off.

I’m back to tell you 3 things about ID cards:

1. Migrants ALREADY HAVE biometric ID cards & govts have been trying to digitise them for years w repeated fuckups & failures causing complete chaos - they don’t work, you do not want that system for you.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 12d

For anybody who says we are not a “papers please society”. Bullshit. We have to show papers to travel, get a job, and rent a flat. ID cards would simply make this simpler.

Grey economies also exist in countries with ID cards. So for labour to pitch this as anti-migration is simply xenophobia.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 12d

Labour pitching ID cards as an explicitly anti-immigration measure is one of the dumbest things this government has done, among a very crowded field.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 12d

*they should also not be digital-only. That is simply dumb (see EUSS)

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 12d

There are issues of exclusion that need to be addressed in designing an ID card scheme. But generally, they provide a very efficient way of understanding your population and designing appropriate public services and spending.

Labour are fucking all of this away for anti-immigrant populism.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 12d

Labour pitching ID cards as an explicitly anti-immigration measure is one of the dumbest things this government has done, among a very crowded field.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 13d

As a bonus; “Brit card” isn’t gonna go down well in certain parts of NI

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 13d

A couple of points:

Why does it need to be digital (i)? Physical cards are easy to carry and don’t disenfranchise the elderly

(ii) The EUSS system constantly breaks

Will be we able to opt out of whatever AI training the govt will inevitably sign up to?

news.sky.com/story/politi...

Politics latest: All British adults to require a digital ID 'Brit Card'

Keir Starmer is set to announce plans for mandatory digitial ID. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham has claimed Labour MPs are privately urging him to challenge the prime minister in his latest controversial int...

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Centre for Cross Border Cooperation @crossborder.bsky.social · 13d

Have you completed the survey?

We're calling on civic society organisations & local authorities across NI & ROI to take part in participate in our survey on the Conditions for North-South & East-West Cooperation.

crossborder.ie/news/complet...

@benrosher.bsky.social @anthonysoares.bsky.social

Complete the survey today: calling on civic society organisations and local authorities - The Centre for Cross Border Cooperation | CBS

Share this page: The Centre for Cross Border Cooperation is calling on civic society organisations and local authorities in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to take part in its latest sur...

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Centre for Cross Border Cooperation @crossborder.bsky.social · 14d

We're inviting civic society organisations and local authorities in NI and ROI to respond to our Survey on the Conditions for North-South and East-West Cooperation. Reposts appreciated.
Get involved before 6 October: crossborder.ie/news/complet...
@anthonysoares.bsky.social @benrosher.bsky.social

The words Your Opinion Matters on a yellow background with an animated loud speaker on the of the illustration.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 17d

NEW

The proscription of Palestine Action as a case study of terrorism law

Why is the general criminal law not sufficient to deal with direct action groups?

Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/the-proscr...

Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/09/the-...

A list of terrorism legislation since 2000

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 17d

If a government recognises Palestinian statehood then it recognises its right to exist. On that basis, that government cannot continue to fund and arm a state that is explicitly trying to destroy the newly recognised state.

Otherwise you’re just doing an actual virtue signal.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

ARK @ark-ni.bsky.social · 21d

🔔New ARK Research Update 🔔

The latest Research Update by Professor @katyhayward.bsky.social and Dr @benrosher.bsky.social explores attitudes in Northern Ireland on the constitutional question.

Read here ➡️ www.ark.ac.uk/ARK/sites/de...

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Nicola Kelly @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social · 23d

What this piece shows is that the scheme is already a mess. The Home Office is deporting people entirely at random. Those in detention don't have legal representation. Ten children have been erroneously detained and released. Legal challenges will follow.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

‘We can’t eat. We can’t sleep. It’s a disaster’: the small boat detainees waiting to be sent back to France

This week the first migrants could be flown out of Britain under the ‘one in, one out’ deportation scheme. They talk about their fears and incomprehension

www.theguardian.com

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 26d

Tell me again that Israel is not knowingly and intentionally committing a genocide

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · 28d

More politicians have condemned political violence in the last hour after the shooting of a guy who actively encouraged political violence than they have in the last 2 years of a genocide.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · Sep 8

Ironically, it appears that AI chatbots hallucinate for the same reason that students feel compelled to use them:

They were socialized in a high-stakes testing culture that rewards guessing and maybe getting it right over admitting when there's something you just don't know.

Why Language Models Hallucinate, by Kalai et al.

Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when
uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty. Such
“hallucinations” persist even in state-of-the-art systems and undermine trust. We argue that
language models hallucinate because the training and evaluation procedures reward guessing over
acknowledging uncertainty, and we analyze the statistical causes of hallucinations in the modern
training pipeline. Hallucinations need not be mysterious—they originate simply as errors in binary
classification. If incorrect statements cannot be distinguished from facts, then hallucinations
in pretrained language models will arise through natural statistical pressures. We then argue
that hallucinations persist due to the way most evaluations are graded—language models are
optimized to be good test-takers, and guessing when uncertain improves test performance. This
“epidemic” of penalizing uncertain responses can only be addressed through a socio-technical
mitigation: modifying the scoring of existing benchmarks that are misaligned but dominate
leaderboards, rather than introducing additional hallucination evaluations. This change may
steer the field toward more trustworthy AI systems.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Nicola Kelly @nicolakellywrites.bsky.social · Sep 8

Chuffed to see my 'insightful' book 'Anywhere But Here' referenced in the @financialtimes.com Inside Politics newsletter.

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · Sep 8

Why, when governments say they will do “whatever it takes” to stop small boats, do they never do the one thing that will actually work and open safe routes.

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · Sep 2

People seeking asylum already carry Application Registration Cards (ARC) cards, for starters. Digital id requires you to have access to digital tech, and, despite the rantings of some right wingers, asylum seekers aren't issued with mobile phones or iPads, so many would be unable to access one. 1/

Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · Sep 2

Keir Starmer told his Cabinet today that tackling small boats is "central" to his administration and he will now "go further and faster" to "detain and remove" people, including potentially requiring them to have digital ID cards

Ben Rosher @benrosher.bsky.social · Aug 25

This! Over years the Home Office has successfully created the hostile environment it intended. But it’s not really sure how it’s achieved this.

This leaves a huge gap between the formulation of border policy, the responsibility for its enactment, and accountability for its effect.

Alasdair Mackenzie @alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social · Aug 25

A big issue is the HO has the institutional memory of a goldfish. It doesn’t know why the system has been designed as it is & can’t remember what it looked like previously. So round & round we go in our little bowl, constantly surprised by the same issues we encountered & negotiated moments ago 6/

a goldfish is swimming in a tank with bubbles

ALT: a goldfish is swimming in a tank with bubbles

media.tenor.com

Reposted by Ben Rosher

Alasdair Mackenzie @alasdairmackenzie.bsky.social · Aug 25

Hard to tell from this bland announcement just what the government plans for asylum appeals, so I’m trying not to speculate. But I’ve worked in the sector in various roles since 1987 & I’ve seen a lot of policy proposals come & go so I have Thoughts on the dysfunctional way we decide such things
1/🧵

Tribunal system reforms to speed up asylum decisions

A new independent body will be set up to speed up decision making on asylum appeal cases.