Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire 

The SAC Decolonisation Working Group welcomes Dr. Nadine El-Enany for an online event discussing racialisation and migration politics in the UK, particularly in the context of the violent displacement of Ukrainians. 

The SAC Decolonisation Working Group hosts an event with Dr. Nadine El-Enany, to discuss her book, Bordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire (2020) as well as speaking more broadly about the relationship between racialisation and migration politics in the UK, particularly in the context of the ongoing violent displacement of Ukrainians.

Nadine El-Enany is Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law. El-Enany teaches and researches in the fields of migration and refugee law, European Union law, protest and criminal justice. Her current research projects, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, focus on questions of race and justice in death in custody cases, and the role of law in addressing health inequalities arising from environmental harm.

‘Bordering 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.’

After speaking, Dr. El-Enany will open the conversation for questions and discussion with attendees.

8 June, 2-4 pm

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 860 1413 3472

Passcode: 554911

 

 

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