(B)ordering 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. Regardless of what the law, media and political discourse 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. '(B)ordering Britain is a hugely significant study that undertakes the urgent task of situating controversial topics such as migration and asylum within the larger history of empire and race. Powerfully written and knowledgeable, it is essential reading for anyone interested in how imperial history shapes the present.' — Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial resistance and British dissent 'A supreme piece of demystification, which takes aim at one of the most prevalent and insidious errors of thought in modern times' — Morning Star