Monday 30 March 18:00 - 20:00

Doughty Street Chambers
54 Doughty Street
London
WC1N 2LS

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Book Launch: Nadine El-Enany '(B)ordering Britain'

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Doughty Street Chambers, the Centre for Research on Race and Law (Birkbeck) and Feminist Legal Studies are delighted to invite you to the launch of Nadine El-Enany’s book, (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire (Manchester 2020).

In (B)ordering Britain El-Enany 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 most 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 living under the weight of colonialism’s legacy of race and racism, have every right to come to Britain and take back what is theirs.

El-Enany will be in conversation about her book with Ulele Burnham and Devyani Prabhat.

The event will commence at 6 pm and will be followed by a reception with light refreshments. Please arrive before 6 pm to register.

Speaker biographies:

Nadine El-Enany is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck, University of London. She researches in the fields of migration and refugee law, European Union law, protest and criminal law and justice. She is the co-director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law at Birkbeck.

Ulele Burnham is a barrister at Doughty Street Chambers specialising in equality and mental health law. She also has an academic interest in critical race theory.

Devyani Prabhat is a Reader in Law at the University of Bristol Law School. She is an expert on British citizenship and migration law and the author of the Birks Prize winning Unleashing the Force of Law: Legal Mobilization, National Security, Basic Freedoms (Palgrave Macmillan 2016).

Books will be available for purchase at the event. Doughty Street Chambers is wheelchair accessible.  Please contact [email protected] if you have accessibility requirements.


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