In May 2012 Home Secretary Theresa May vowed to create ‘a really hostile environment for illegal migrants’, heralding in a set of policies which require landlords, employers, healthcare workers and others to check people’s immigration documents, which creates a barrier to accessing work, housing, healthcare, banking and other services. Most of these measures were introduced through the Immigration Act 2014 and expanded in the Immigration Act 2016. But what has been the impact of the decade-long political project to make the UK ‘tough on immigration’? 

In this episode Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Zrinka Bralo, CEO Migrants Organise. From a starting point of recent headlines focussed on 10 years of the Hostile Environment, they discuss how this made visible structural racism within the UK, brought borders into the everyday lives of migrants, and how it has become normalised, working insidiously through the language used to talk about migration. From the Rwanda plan and channel crossing pushbacks, to the public welcome of little Amal and outpouring of charity around Grenfell, Zrinka calls for migrant justice and the need to build bridges not walls.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1. The Hostile Environment
2. Everyday bordering
3. Migrant justice

Quote

What happens to immigrants is just a dress rehearsal to what happens to all of us. And if we're not awake, and alert and acting, the human rights are going to be taken and taken away from us, and we're not going to be paying attention.

— Zrinka Bralo

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find Zrinka on Twitter at migrants organise an award winning grassroots migrant justice platform or in this article on ‘Little Amal, Channel deaths and cruelty by design’

For more about the hostile environment:

• Kamila Shamsie’s lecture on a decade of the hostile environment 
• Colin Yeo’s blog 
• ‘Go home, The politics of immigration controversies’ a book by Hannah Jones et al
•  This book by Maya Goodfellow

Our headline ‘Home Office still has no evidence to show hostile environment policy is working, report finds’ by May Bulman was published in The Independent 17 June 2020

Find more from Michaela on the Windrush Deportation Scandal in this episode of Who do we think we are?

To discover more about the concept of everyday bordering we suggest this article by Nira Yuval-Davis, Georgie Wemyss and Kathryn Cassidy.

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Commonplace understandings of citizenship equate it with equality – at least among those holding the same citizenship. But looking the processes by which national citizenships develop shows that gaining equality for some was achieved at the expense of others, who might never be considered as equal. 

How might shifting scale to the global transform how we think about the development of British citizenship? Join us as we explore the relationship between the development of national citizenships and global social inequalities. Presenter Michaela Benson reflects on what is overlooked in the focus on the equalising potential of citizenship. George Kalivis dusts off reports relating to Margaret Thatcher’s visit to India in 1981, and how proposed changes in British nationality legislation were received there. And Michaela’s joined by Manuela Boatcă, Professor in Sociology and Head of the Global Studies Programme at the University of Freiburg to discuss how the formation of nation-states and the development of citizenship was caught up in the production of global social inequalities that persist in the present-day. And we discuss a range of examples that include investment citizenship, Brexit, the European Union and much, much more. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

1 Citizenship and the production of global inequalities past and present

2 Gender, race and citizenship

3 Brexit and the European Union

Quote 

What a Western passport does is it grants visa free access to the vast majority of countries in the world. Basically, it's a ticket to global social mobility. Now in turn, it is much more difficult for women for LGBTQ individuals and for racial minorities to escape. The limitations are of the citizenship that they receive at birth, especially when they're born in a poor country. Unlike these investors, they women and feminised others have no option or to get access to visa free travel

— Manuela Boatcă

Find out more

Find out more about Manuela on her website and on Twitter 

Read her paper Thinking Europe Otherwise and her work on the coloniality of citizenship with co-author Julia Roth

Rieko Karatani, Defining British Citizenship

Kathleen Paul, Whitewashing Britain

Gurminder Bhambra, Citizens and Others

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Mass shooting in the US have been headlines news over the past month. The pattern? White gunmen opening fire in supermarkets, schools and public spaces, killing and injuring black, brown and hispanic people going about their daily business. Journalists, commentators and politicians have rallied to try and explain these horrific incidents, identifying the role of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory in motivating the actions of lone shooters. But what do these explanations overlook and shield from view? 

In this episode of Beyond the Headlines, Michaela Benson and Ala Sirriyeh are joined by Aaron Winter, who researches racism, hate crime, the far right and right-wing extremism and terrorism, to take a close up look at the headlines reporting on shootings in Buffalo, where a white man opened fire in a supermarket in a predominantly black neighbourhood murdering 10 people. We discuss the history of the ‘Great Replacement’ theory and related white supremacist conspiracy theories as they plays out in different historical and political contexts. The problems with the narrative of the ‘lone, white, gunman’. And we consider the relationship between these horrific incidents, structural and institutional racism, and the mainstreaming of illiberal approaches to migration in the US and UK, including thinking about Brexit and the Hostile Environment. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 Mass shootings as racist violence

2 The ‘Great Replacement Theory’ and white supremacy

3 Mainstreaming the far right and illiberal political approaches to migration

Quote

Why do they never call it terrorism when white people do it? Well they do. They often do to remove it to compartmentalise it and to remove it from all the mainstream systemic and institutional white supremacy that needs to keep going.

• Aaron Winter

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Find Aaron on Twitter or Google Scholar

If you want to find out more about mainstreaming the far right, we recommend his book Reactionary Democracy co-authored with Aurelien Mondon

Our headline Great Replacement: The Conspiracy Theory racist violence by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours was published in Al Jazeera 18 May 2022

You might also be interested in Michaela’s writing on Brexit focussed on the question what’s wrong with the narrative of the left behind

And we also wanted to give some love to this excellent paper by Maria Cecilia Hwang and Rhacel Salazar Parreñas about the Atlanta shooting where eight people, predominantly Asian women, were murdered.

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What is the UK’s Nationality and Borders Act? How does it relate to previous acts concerned with nationality and immigration legislation? What is the back story to some of the central changes that this act introduces? We cover all of this and more in this bumper episode to mark the start of Series 2 of Who do we think we are?

Presenter Michaela Benson introduces the Nationality and Borders Act and how this sits in a longer history of Acts which considers changes to nationality and immigration legislation alongside one another. She also joins podcast researcher George Kalivis in the archive, where they discuss the behind closed doors responses of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher about what Britain should do in respect to the resettlement of refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s. We’re joined by Trent Lamont Miller and Dave Varney of the British Overseas Territories Citizenship campaign to discuss the impetus behind this campaign and the journey to get legislation changed to allow the children of British Overseas Territories citizens born outside of marriage abroad to be entitled for this citizenship status. But as our conversation with Fizza Qureshi (CEO of Migrants Rights Network) reveals, the success of this campaign for BOTCs is bittersweet in the context of the predominantly bleak consequences of this act.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1. Nationality and Borders Act
2. Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees
3. British Overseas Territories Citizens
4. Refugee and migrant rights

Quote

When you have no effective safe routes to come to the UK, or where you have those routes, and they're measly, in terms of the numbers that are available to people, or they're really narrow in their scope, I mean, what other ways are people going to have to resort to, apart from getting on a boat to entering the UK?

—Fizza Qureshi, CEO Migrants Rights Network

This just makes no sense to me because my British BOTC father did not marry my foreign born mother ... every child has copies of both parents DNA, they have two sides of the family tree for the UK Government to take a pair of scissors and cut away one part of that DNA and family tree and then say you're not valid, you're not welcome, go away. It's deeply hurtful.— Trent Lamont Miller, BOTC Campaign

Find out more

BOTC Campaign on Twitter and Online

Migrants’ Rights Network Online, Twitter and Instagram

Read more

Rieko Karatani, Britishness Reconsidered

Margaret Thatcher reluctant to give boat people refuge in Britain

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Countries around the world have been quick to crow about the provisions they are putting in place to welcome those displaced by the war in Ukraine. Yet, all might not be what it seems.

In this first episode of Beyond the Headlines, hosts Dr Ala Sirriyeh and Professor Michaela Benson are in conversation with Dr Yvonne Su, York University to examine what the headlines announcing a warm welcome to Ukrainian refugees in Poland and the UK shield from view. We explore how even among those displaced by the war, not everyone has equal access to leaving Ukraine. Race, gender and sexuality can all shape people’s fate at the border, leaving some with only unsafe routes out of the conflict-ridden country.

And we consider the narrative that presents Ukrainians as ‘good refugees’, within the wider context of a politics of migration that otherwise casts many of those seeking new lives abroad as illegitimate and underserving, and within states that have readily deployed deterrents and push backs against migrants.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

1 Ukraine war and refugees

2 Borders and inequalities

3 ‘Good refugees’

Quote

What everyone is hearing is just the numbers of refugees that Poland's accepting or Germany's accepting, or the UK is not accepting, in this case, but then we don't like you're saying we don't look behind the headlines and into what's happening on the ground.

— Dr Yvonne Su

Find out more

Find Yvonne on Twitter or her website

Read her writing on Poland’s border propaganda and anti-immigration sentiments; the ‘good, bad and ideal’ refugees; and how standard humanitarian responses lead to LGBTQ and trans refugees falling between the cracks.

Our headline ‘How European response to Ukraine refugees differs from UK’ The Guardian, 11 March 2022

Ala’s thoughts on the politics of compassion and the channel crossings

Michaela’s writing (with Professor Nando Sigona) about the UK’s response to and provisions for Ukrainian refugees.

For something a bit different, we recommend this episode of Academic Aunties which features Yvonne in conversation with Dr. Ethel Tungohan about Turning Red.

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What rights to citizenship do those from Britain’s 14 remaining overseas territories? What about those who through no fault of their own found themselves displaced and exiled from the territories through which they could claim this right? 

In Episode 10, we look indepth at the case of the Chagos Islanders and the consequences of their forced displacement from the British Indian Ocean Territories for their access to British citizenship. Michaela Benson explains the emergence of the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 and how this departed from previous transformations to the citizenship provisions for those in Britain’s overseas territories and who this excluded. George Kalivis heads into the archive to revisit how the BOTA 2002 was announced in the UK and the responses to this from the governments of these overseas territories. And we hear from Rosy Leveque and David Jerome Simon of British Indian Ocean Territories Citizens about the forced displacement of their ancestors and how this has led to unequal access to British citizenship, and their hopes for amendments to the Nationality and Borders Bill.  

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.  

In this episode we cover …  

1 The Chagos Islanders  

2 The British Overseas Territories Act 2002 

3 Nationality and Borders Bill   

Quote  

20 years ago, we had the British Overseas Territories act. And we thought that was a godsend. That was a really good solution. 20 years down the line, we realised that there were quite a few people were left out. 

— David Jerome Simon, BIOTC 

... we can just only hope and that the House of Lords can do the right thing and grant these Chagossian descendants their British citizenship. 

— Rosy Leveque, BIOTC 

Find out more about the topics in today’s episode

Follow BIOT Citizens on Twittter 

Visit the BIOT Citizens website 

Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens and Amnesty International Briefing on the British Nationality Rights of Chagossians   

Chagos Islanders in Mauritius and the UK by Laura Jeffrey 

Last colonial citizens given full UK rights  by Anthony Browne

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To find out more about Who do we think we are? including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.  

Did you know that until 2014 that some of those born overseas to unmarried British citizen fathers were not eligible for citizenship? Or that even when this was amended, the provisions were not extended to those born in similar circumstances to British Overseas Territories Citizens? How would you feel if you were denied the right to nationality because your parents weren’t married when you were born? And what does this tell us about who counts as British? 

In this episode we look at the human face of so-called ‘nationality anomalies’ and the struggles of the children of unmarried parents born overseas to gain equal rights to citizenship and nationality. This is an area of nationality legislation where discrimination on the grounds of race, gender, and parentage come crashing together. We explore how these outdated understandings of parental relationships at the heart of these anomalies sit in a long history of gender discrimination within nationality legislation. Michaela considers the back story to proposals in Clause 1 of the Nationality and Borders Bill that seek to address these anomalies. George reports on a complicated case of a child not entitled to the citizenship of either of their lesbian parents nor of the country in which they were born.  And we’re joined by citizenship equality campaigner, Tabitha Sprague, who successfully fought for those born overseas to British citizens fathers to be entitled for British citizenship, to explain more about this struggle and her personal history that brought this about.   

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.  

In this episode we cover …  

1. The children of British parents denied the right to British nationality 

1. Gender discrimination  

1. Immigration Act 2014 and the Nationality and Borders Bill 

Quote  

My half sister was able to have citizenship through our dad because she was born in marriage. But I wasn’t. And I remember thinking why couldn’t I have citizenship because of the way I was born? 

—Tabitha Sprague 

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? 

Tabitha tweets about these issues @ukcitequality 

She also recommends the work of The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens 

Call to action 

Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.  

To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.  

Did you know that British citizenship can be cancelled or removed? And that when the Nationality and Borders Bill passes into legislation the UK Home Secretary will be able to remove citizenship from individuals without giving them prior notice? Certain conditions may accompany this, but the government’s past record on citizenship deprivation shows that these powers have disproportionately by exercised against those from Britain’s racially and religiously minoritized communities.

In this episode we look in depth at how Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill sits in a longer history of citizenship deprivation . Over time, the UK government’s powers to strip people of their British citizenship have extended and expanded. The fallout from this has been uneven, impacting Britain’s racially minoritized communities disproportionately. Michaela introduces the case of Shamima Begum and explains the back story to Clause 9. George draws attention to the concerns raised about the extension of these powers. And we talk with Zainab Batul Naqvi, Senior Lecturer in Law at De Montfort University about how in recent years deprivation powers have been used disproportionately against Muslim citizens and how such discrimination echoes the tactics used by colonial administrators and governments.

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.

In this episode we cover …

• Citizenship deprivation
• The case of Shamima Begum
• Clause 9 of the Nationality and Borders Bill

Quote

There's been a really big expansion of the powers that the government has to strip people have their citizenship …[It’s] something that's being weaponized by the government against certain communities, more than others … It's a really big fear for many people who are minoritized and marginalised in the UK, and it's mostly people of colour.

— Zainab Batul Naqvi

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Zainab tweets about these issues and more @zb_naqvi

Read her latest paper in Social and Legal Studies 

Head over to the Free Movement blog for Colin Yeo’s analysis of the increase in the use of deprivation powers

Over at The Conversation Devyani Prabhat explains Clause 9

Our recommended reading is Luke De Noronha’s Deporting Black Britons

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Should the ability to speak English be a precondition for access to rights and belonging in Britain today? What is really tested for in English-language testing for the purposes of migration and naturalisation? How is this connected to the global dominance of English as a ‘world language’? And what links this to the increasing hostility experienced by those speaking languages other than English in public space in Britain today? It might seem common sense that to live in a country you should be able to speak the language. But looking at the relatively short history of language testing into the UK’s citizenship testing regime reveals that not all is as it seems.

In this episode, we discuss how language testing was introduced into the naturalisation process alongside the Life in the UK test in 2002. What can the back story to its introduction tell us about Britishness and belonging? Presenter Michaela Benson outlines how the stage was set for English language ability to be part of the criteria for becoming British through the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. We hear from George about his experiences of language testing for the purposes of coming to the UK for postgraduate study and heads back into the archives to uncover how these new provisions related to anti-terrorism legislation. And we’re joined by sociolinguistics scholar Kamran Khan to explore how testing potential citizens for linguistic proficiency emerged against the backdrop of domestic concerns about integration and community cohesion and the global rise of Islamophobia in the wake of 9/11, and what this meant for Britishness and belonging. 

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. 

In this episode we cover … 

• Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and 9/11
• Islamophobia and Britishness
• The relationship between language and nation-building

Quote

What that comes down to in the end is do you think language is a precondition for access to rights nd all those things that go with citizenship? And that comes with how you see the nation. Monolingualism and English is, is really tied up with the kind of idea of nation building.

• Kamran Khan

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

Kamran tweets about his work (and other things) @securityling

His book Becoming a citizen explores many of the themes we address in the episode brought to life through the experiences of W, a Yemeni migrant in the UK, going through this process. But we also recommend his recent piece in Ethnicities that explores his ideas about the racial politics of language proficiency in the UK’s citizenship regime. 

And we are recommending Nisha Kapoor’s fantastic book Deport, Deprive Extradite.

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When National Security Law was imposed in Hong Kong SAR in 2020, the UK government responded by opening up a bespoke visa scheme to facilitate the migration and settlement of Hong Kongers in the UK. Upheld by the UK’s Home Office as evidence of the UK’s ‘fair and generous’ approach to immigration, on the surface it seems like an exception to the Hostile Environment. But what if all was not as it seems?  

In this episode, we explore the back story to this new visa, to ask the question what can the Hong Kong BN(O) visa tell us about Britain’s borders past and present? Presenter Michaela Benson uncovers how Britain’s present-day relationship to the people of Hong Kong sits in a longer history through which the Hong Kongers had their rights eroded. George Kalivis heads into the archives to uncover how the British government responded to earlier political uprisings in Hong Kong, the 1989 protests about the Tiananmen Square massacres. And they are joined by John Vassiliou, an immigration and nationality lawyer at Shepherd and Wedderburn, who explains more about the bespoke HK BN(O) visa scheme and why it means that this is pegged to a so-called ‘useless citizenship’ status.  

You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.  

In this episode we cover …  

• Britain’s relationship to people of Hong Kong from the 1960s onwards 
• The Hong Kong BN(O) visa  
• Useless citizenships 

Quote 

When we think of a typical citizen of a country they usually have certain benefits like I described—and the main one is the right to live there—and a BN(O) citizen does not.  They are not on their own, there are another four types of British citizenship status that are in a similar category to this and they’ve generally been described by courts as useless citizenship statuses in the past.  

 — John Vassiliou  

Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? 

You can find out more about John and his work here. He tweets @john_vassiliou1. 

Read his informative pieces on the Free Movement Blog about the HK BN(O) visa including this overview of the scheme and this comment on Hong Kongers applying for political asylum in the UK. 

Read Michaela’s thoughts about what the case of the Hong Kongers in British nationality legislation can tell us about the racialised politics of belonging in Britain. Here’s the full piece and a blogpost with the key points if you are short on time …  

We also want to give some love to this fantastic piece by Jun Pang about how the Hong Kongers in the UK are positioned as ‘good migrants’ and why this matters in the context of the new immigration plan.   

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