(B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire’

‘(B)ordering Britain charts the evolution of British immigration, asylum and nationality law from the 1900s to the present, arguing that it must be understood in the context of Britain’s imperial history. Against the all-too-familiar mythological narratives of Britain’s colonial past, it shows how a retreating imperial power resorted to immigration laws to cut itself off physically and symbolically from its colonies and the Commonwealth, taking with it what it had plundered. British immigration laws are acts of colonial seizure and violence, obstructing the vast majority of racialised people from accessing the spoils of empire. Regardless of what the law, media and politicians 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’