Cowan Leah - Border Nation

Powerful

Nikesh Shukla, editor of The Good Immigrant

An accessible, well-researched and indispensable guide, myth-busting at every turn, and charting not just the origins of these violent realities, but of equal importance, how we can dismantle them

Joshua Virasami, author of How To Change It: Make a Difference

A powerful indictment of borders and border regimes that lays bare the story of how they emerged, how they exercise a tenacious hold on our imagination, and how they enact lethal violence on so many Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge

Cowan brings the very notion of a border into sharp focus in this meticulous and compassionate manifesto

Juno Mac, co-author of Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight For Sex Workers Rights

Passionate and laser sharp, Cowan not only exposes how greed, racism and hypocrisy work over generations to wall people out of Britain but also gives us tools to dig tunnels under those walls Professor Bridget Anderson, Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol and Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol

Outspoken by Pluto

Series Editor: Neda Tehrani

Platforming underrepresented voices; intervening in important political issues; revealing powerful histories and giving voice to our experiences; Outspoken by Pluto is a book series unlike any other. Unravelling debates on feminism and class, work and borders, unions and climate justice, this series has the answers to the questions youre asking. These are books that dissent.

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A Story of Migration

Leah Cowan

First published 2021 by Pluto Press

345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA

www.plutobooks.com

Copyright Leah Cowan 2021

The right of Leah Cowan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 7453 4107 1 Paperback

ISBN 978 1 7868 0702 1 PDF eBook

ISBN 978 1 7868 0704 5 Kindle eBook

ISBN 978 1 7868 0703 8 EPUB eBook

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.

Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England

Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America

To my grandmothers

Thank you to the team at Pluto, in particular to Neda, for your precision, patience and enthusiasm, and to my agent Millie for her ongoing guidance.

Thank you to those who have encouraged me to keep writing. My parents and sisters have provided unwavering support; Patrice Lawrence played a pivotal role in setting me on the road. Thank you to everyone who spoke to me formally and informally for this book, including my grandad, O.K. Cowan.

Thank you to the Society of Authors for granting me the John C. Lawrence award which enabled me to take two unpaid months off work to finish this book.

Thank you to Micha Frazer for your voice notes and dedicated unionising, a true comrade. Thank you Tamara-Jade and Marissa for your wise inputs youre still the smartest people I know. Thank you to the team at Anamot Press for your somewhat relentless encouragement.

I am inspired and informed by the writers, thinkers and organisers who are working to break down Britains borders in different ways: UKBLM, JCWI, SOAS Detainee Support Group (SDS), Marai Larasi, Dorett Jones, Neha Kagal, Huda Jawad, Luke de Noronha, Empty Cages Collective, Community Action on Prison Expansion (CAPE), Docs not Cops, Corporate Watch, Anti-raids Network, Sisters Uncut, United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC), the London Campaign Against Police and State Violence (LCAPSV), North East London Migrant Action (NELMA), and the New Economy Organisers Network (NEON).

To Daisy, Delia and Soraya: I am eternally grateful for your love and care.

Another world is possible beyond the plunder, exploitation and expropriation that are the bedrock of liberal democracies. Akwugo Emejulu and Francesca Sobande

To struggle for a world without borders is to have hope... is to think that human beings can do better, and we do deserve better. Bridget Anderson

Borders are indisputably sites of violence. Borders create citizens and non-citizens, aliens and nationals, undocumented people and sans papiers, foreigners and expats. Borders segregate, categorise and dehumanise us. They are the product of long histories of injustice, which means that we our, flesh, bones and the very breath which keeps us alive can be crudely termed illegal in the eyes of the law. The phrase, illegal immigrant, which in Britain creeps from newspaper headlines to state policies and back again, encourages us to believe that we can be a violation of law and order as it is sold to us.

However, laws and order are not objective truths, and borders have not always existed. Immigration laws, for example, are ideas crafted in the imaginations of the powerful to maintain their position and preserve the world as they like it. Borders are not real. The criminal justice system and its agents such as border all function to uphold laws and protect the status quo of inequality. They do not keep the peace. These structures bring the violence. Laws try to rationalise the border regime which fundamentally ignores the humanity of those who move. Knowing this, lets take as our root and starting position the reality that no human is illegal.

In this book, I draw connecting lines between Britains murky past and the precarious present of the UK border regime. Through interrogating Britains imperial history, we can better understand the current context of immigration laws, political agendas and structures of inequality which prop up the border. These chapters explore the purpose and consequences of borders; sometimes imagined as benign geographical markers drawing out where one country ends, and another begins. Through knowing the history, character, and ever-shifting purpose of borders and the agents that enforce them, we can better resist the border and equip ourselves against its impact on us all.

Resistance to the border is complicated. It often involves rejecting borders while at the same time trying to improve the immediate realities of people crossing them, by seeking to reform or soften the border regime. There is here, in this resistance, what author and academic Natasha King calls a fundamental tension: sometimes we find ourselves acting within and to an extent validating a system that is harming ourselves and others. This happens when we defend and advocate for peoples right to reside or have citizenship, alongside also rejecting the exalted category of citizen.and mobility, which is complex and messy. Free movement is so basic, and so intrinsic that it could be described as an inevitable part of the human condition. Underneath it all, movement and border-crossing is so expected as to be banal, but nonetheless our stories of moving and journeying are rich and wondrous in their immense variety and multiple dimensions.