Description
To understand how contemporary migration politics shape international relations, research must transcend statist and presentist frameworks and instead pay attention to how the colonial past is entangled with the present.
Cross-fertilizing literature that centers the coloniality of contemporary migration politics with work on diaspora power in IR, this paper argues that the entangled nature of contemporary migration politics can best be made visible through an approach which centers diasporic connections.
To support this argument, the paper draws on three years of qualitative multi-methods research, including ethnographic observations, interviews and document analysis (contemporary and archival), to develop an understanding of British migration politics through its connections with two diasporic formations that are presently negotiating their position in the “Global Britain” project, and that emerged through Britain’s imperial and postcolonial politics: Hongkongers, and Chagossians.
The paper illuminates how contemporary Britain deals with the political consequences of its past. It shows that ‘Global Britain’ is constituted in and through its connections with these (post)colonial diasporic communities and moves us towards a better understanding of how and under what circumstances diaspora (re)create or challenge hegemonic politics.
