Date: 2020
Type: Book
(B)ordering Britain : law, race and empire
Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2020
EL-ENANY, Nadine, (B)ordering Britain : law, race and empire, Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2020
- https://hdl.handle.net/1814/66353
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
(B)ordering Britain argues that Britain is the spoils of empire, its immigration law is colonial violence and irregular immigration is anti-colonial resistance. In announcing itself as postcolonial through immigration and nationality laws passed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Britain cut itself off symbolically and physically from its colonies and the Commonwealth, taking with it what it had plundered. This imperial vanishing act cast Britain's colonial history into the shadows. The British Empire, about which Britons know little, can be remembered fondly as a moment of past glory, as a gift once given to the world. Meanwhile immigration laws are justified on the basis that they keep the undeserving hordes out. In fact, immigration laws are acts of colonial seizure and violence. They obstruct the vast majority of racialised people from accessing colonial wealth amassed in the course of colonial conquest. Regardless of what the law, media and political discourse dictate, people with personal, ancestral or geographical links to colonialism, or those existing under the weight of its legacy of race and racism, have every right to come to Britain and take back what is theirs.
Table of Contents:
-- Preface
-- Introduction: Britain as the spoils of empire
-- 1 Bordering and ordering
-- 2 Aliens: immigration law's racial architecture
-- 3 Subjects and citizens: cordoning off colonial spoils
-- 4 Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers: predictable arrivals
-- 5 European citizens and third country nationals: Europe's colonial embrace
-- Conclusion: 'Go home' as an invitation to stay
-- Notes
-- Acknowledgements
-- Index
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/66353
ISBN: 9781526145420
Publisher: Manchester University Press