This book analyses the practice of virginity testing endured by South Asian women who wished to enter Britain between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and places this practice into a wider historical context. Using recently opened government documents the extent to which these women were interrogated and scrutinized at the border is uncovered.
This book analyses the practice of virginity testing endured by South Asian women who wished to enter Britain between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and places this practice into a wider historical context. Using recently opened government documents the extent to which these women were interrogated and scrutinized at the border is uncovered.
This book analyses the practice of virginity testing endured by South Asian women who wished to enter Britain between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, and places this practice into a wider historical context. Using recently opened government documents the extent to which these women were interrogated and scrutinized at the border is uncovered.
This book analyses bordering practices and their negative effects as well as the many creative and often grassroots ways in which borders are resisted and reinvented. From the hostile environment to Brexit and the Nationality and Borders Bill, the UK border regime has become increasingly strict and complex, operating both at the edge of the state and within everyday life in unprecedented ways. At the same time, this securitisation approach is often contested, and its effects are fought daily by many groups and individuals. This book explores this tension, documenting and analysing how the contemporary UK border is imagined, constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed in multiple ways. To draw together the different pieces that compose this evolving and conflicting landscape, this book uses the concept of "borderscapes", which views borders as sites of multiple tensions between hegemonic, non-hegemonic, and counter-hegemonic imaginaries and practices. This lens enables contributors to draw a multifocal overview of the UK border that includes the different human and material actors that form it, the spaces and practices they shape, and the imaginaries and counter-imaginaries that emerge from their conflictual encounters. Bringing together contributions by researchers from a variety of disciplines, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of migration and border studies, refugee studies, human geography, criminology, sociology, and anthropology.
Identifying a pattern of risky experimentation with automated systems in the Home Office, this book outlines precautionary measures that are essential to ensure that society benefits from government automation without exposing individuals to unacceptable risks.
This book addresses the centrality of race and racism in consolidating the nationalisms currently prominent in Brexit Britain. Particular attention is given to the issues of refugees, borders and bordering, and the wider forms of nativist and anti- Muslim sentiments that anchor today’s increasingly populist forms of nationalist politics. It is argued that the forms of scapegoating and alarmism integral to the revival of nationalism in British politics are fundamentally tied to racialised processes. Equally however, it is argued that such a political climate is not simply discursive, but also yields acute forms of governance, wherein an increasingly violent attention is given by the state to the border. The chapters in the book do however also attempt to think through the possibilities of a constructive response to this moment. Emphasis is given here to the everyday cultural textures that might help shape a popular opposition to racial nationalism. Similarly, the book attempts to unpack the appeal of today’s distinctive populism in ways that might be more responsive to anti-racist and anti-nationalist sentiments. Racial Nationalisms will be of interest to academics and researchers studying postcolonialism, nationalism, ethnic and racial studies, and to advanced students of sociology, political science and public policy. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.
It was only a coincidence that the NHS and the Empire Windrush (a ship carrying 492 migrants from Britain's West Indian colonies) arrived together. On 22 June 1948, as the ship's passengers disembarked, frantic preparations were already underway for 5 July, the Appointed Day when the nation's new National Health Service would first open its doors. The relationship between immigration and the NHS rapidly attained - and has enduringly retained - notable political and cultural significance. Both the Appointed Day and the post-war arrival of colonial and Commonwealth immigrants heralded transformative change. Together, they reshaped daily life in Britain and notions of 'Britishness' alike. Yet the reciprocal impacts of post-war immigration and medicine in post-war Britain have yet to be explored. Contagious Communities casts new light on a period which is beginning to attract significant historical interest. Roberta Bivins draws attention to the importance - but also the limitations - of medical knowledge, approaches, and professionals in mediating post-war British responses to race, ethnicity, and the emergence of new and distinctive ethnic communities. By presenting a wealth of newly available or previously ignored archival evidence, she interrogates and re-balances the political history of Britain's response to New Commonwealth immigration. Contagious Communities uses a set of linked case-studies to map the persistence of 'race' in British culture and medicine alike; the limits of belonging in a multi-ethnic welfare state; and the emergence of new and resolutely 'unimagined' communities of patients, researchers, clinicians, policy-makers, and citizens within the medical state and its global contact zones.
Zusammenfassung: Drawing on empirical research with older South Asian migrant women, this book puts forth new understandings on how older, settled, migrant women construct and understand age through recollections of key life course events that are structured around gendered positions. Divesting from a Western-centric view and presenting a decolonial and Black feminist lens to ageing, the author presents intersectionality and transnational positionality as useful tools to connect old age, migration and memory in critical studies on aging. Chapters flesh out life course memories at different key stages and examines how the intersections of multiple markers of identity (race, gender, language, immigration status, age, etc.) shape how older South Asian migrant women understand and experience their lives. This book will be of interest to scholars with a focus on Gender Studies, Migration Studies, Ageing Studies, and Mobility Studies
A groundbreaking new analysis of the making of modernity, sexuality and race If race is increasingly understood to be socially constructed, why does it continue to seem like a physiological reality? The trickery of race, Sita Balani argues, comes down to how it is embedded in everyday life through the domain we take to be most intimate and essential: sexuality. Modernity inaugurates a new political subject made legible as an individual through the nuclear family, sexual adventure and the pursuit of romantic love. By examining the regulation of sexual life at Britain's borders, in colonial India, and through the functioning of the welfare state, marriage laws, education, and counterterrorism, Balani reveals that sexuality has become fatally intertwined with the making of race.
