Description
Identification systems are typically assumed an effective tool in the fight against exclusion. As these technologies improve, states are introducing more effective methods to identify and categorise their own citizens. Drawing upon the initial findings from oral history interviews conducted as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘The Windrush Scandal in a Transnational and Commonwealth Context’, this talk will explore prominent issues of migration, citizenship and forcible return within the context of the 2018 scandal. This affected thousands of UK residents from the Commonwealth, many of whom believed they were already British yet were erroneously informed they held an irregular migrant status and had no right of abode in the United Kingdom. Through analysis of material collated via discussions with senior diplomats and Caribbean High Commissioners representing Trinidad and Tobago, St. Kitts and Nevis, Jamaica, Belize, Barbados and the United Kingdom, this talk will show that, far from a mistake, the scandal instead evidences serious concerns with the ways in which ‘modern’ European nations are now identifying their citizens and who they are also choosing to exclude as non-belongers.
