Episodes

  • TRAILER: Who do we think we are?

    TRAILER: Who do we think we are?
    Sep 22 2021

    Who do we think we are? is a podcast focussed on the conversations we need to be having about British citizenship today. It tells the story of how British citizenship developed and why this matters for questions of migration, citizenship and belonging in Britain today. The trailer identifies some of the issues covered in the series, from the removal of birthright citizenship through the British Nationality Act 1981 to how Britain was made as a white nation-state through immigration and nationality legislation. The episode features contributors to the series Gurminder Bhambra, Devyani Prabhat, Elsa Oommen, Imogen Tyler, John Vassiliou and host, Michaela Benson. 

    Access the transcript
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    7 mins
  • S1 E1 Why we need to look at history to understand British citizenship today?

    S1 E1 Why we need to look at history to understand British citizenship today?
    Oct 15 2021

    Did you know that the current definition of British citizenship is only 40 years old? Who do we think we are? starts its exploration of British citizenship by looking at the history of British citizenship, and how remembering that the question of who counts as British has changed alongside shifts in Britain’s position in the world might make us think again about these questions and their consequences in the present-day. In this episode, host Michaela Benson, a sociologist specialising in questions of citizenship and migration, draws on her family history to bring the story of British citizenship in the second half of the twentieth century to life and explores British subjecthood, a precursor to citizenship. Podcast researcher George Kalivis goes back into the archive to explore the 1961 Immigration Bill and the measures that this introduced. They are joined by guest, Gurminder Bhambra, Professor in Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies at the University of Sussex, to talk about how recognising the back story to the development of British citizenship might change the ways that we think about migration, social justice and inequality in Britain today.

    Access the episode transcript 

    In this episode we cover …

    • The short history of British citizenship as we know it
    • The introduction of immigration controls for Citizens of the UK and Colonies
    • Why history matters for making sense of the inequalities at the heart of Britain’s contemporary citizenship-migration regime

     

    Quote

    Citizenship is something that emerges in the mid to late 20th century as a category by way of which to stop people moving. We often think about this idea of passports as if that’s what enables us to move; actually, it was about stopping people moving.

    — Gurminder Bhambra

     

    Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?

    You can find out more about Gurminder’s research on her website (which includes links to freely-accessible copies of many of her published works) and follow her on Twitter @GKBhambra

    You can read Michaela’s full interview with Gurminder in The Sociological Review Magazine

    Gurminder also mentioned Radhika Mongia’s 2018 book Indian Migration and Empire. To get a bit more of a flavour of the book and its contents, you can visit The Disorder of Things Blog, who have hosted a symposium on this work.

     

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    To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
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    26 mins
  • S1 E2 What can the development of immigration legislation tell us about citizenship in Britain?

    S1 E2 What can the development of immigration legislation tell us about citizenship in Britain?
    Oct 29 2021
    Why do changes in Britain's immigration laws matter for making sense of citizenship today? What is the relationship of these changes to Britain's shift from empire to nation-state? In this episode, host Michaela Benson explains how decolonisation and the independence struggles of Britain's former colonies set the stage for citizenship to emerge in Britain. She explores the shift from subjecthood to citizenship and what this meant for people around the British Empire. Podcast researcher George Kalivis goes back into the archive to explore the introduction of the British Nationality Act 1948. They are joined by Devyani Prabhat, Professor of Law at the University of Bristol, to talk about what citizenship means in law; how the development of citizenship in Britain was a process of inclusion and exclusion managed through immigration and nationality legislation at their intersections; and how this understanding helps us to see the entrenched racism at the heart of nationality and immigration law today, including the British Nationality Act 1981. Access the full episode transcript In this episode we cover … The shifts in Britain's nationality legislation from the British Nationality Acts of 1948 and 1981How the development of British citizenship was caught up in Britain's decolonisationWhat immigration controls introduced in the 1960s and 1970s can tell us about the changing definition of what it meant to be British over time Quote Citizenship was not really defined in British Immigration and Nationality Laws for a very long time, in terms of the country.  So it wasn’t about the UK as such and the reason is very much historical, it’s based on the British empire and its relationship with colonies and former colonies and each stage of the Immigration and Nationality Laws we see certain elements being added in without actually describing who is a citizen or defining who is a citizen. Devyani Prabhat   Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? You can find out more about Devyani's research on her University of Bristol Website (which includes links to many of her publications) and you can follow her on Twitter @ProfDPrabhat. For the themes covered in this episode, we particular recommend her recent paper Unequal Citizenship and Subjecthood: A rose by any other name..? published in @NILegalQ, and her recent edited volume Citizenship in Times of Turmoil? She has also written extensively about the people’s experiences of becoming British citizens in her book Britishness, belonging and citizenship and about several other timely issues relating to citizenship, including this piece about Shamima Begum: what the legal ruling about her return to the UK actually means:  for @ConversationUK and this for @freemovementlaw focused on Britain's unaccompanied migrant children.   For wider reading, this week's recommendation is Reiko Karatani's 2003 book 'Defining British Citizenship'.   Call to action You can subscribe to the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
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    27 mins
  • BONUS: Talking about citizenship in ‘Global Britain’

    BONUS: Talking about citizenship in ‘Global Britain’
    Nov 9 2021

    Recorded live at the virtual launch event hosted by the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities, Lancaster University, 21 October 2021, Talking about citizenship in ‘Global Britain’ brings together Chantelle Lewis (Surviving Society, University of Oxford); podcast host and producer Michaela Benson (Lancaster University) and podcast researcher George Kalivis (Goldsmiths) to talk about the conversations we need to be having about citizenship and how social science research can help to debunk taken-for-granted understandings of who is a citizen and who is a migrant. They explore why the back story to Britain’s contemporary citizenship-migration regime matters, how the past and present of British citizenship is caught up in global inequalities, and much more.

    You can also watch the event on Youtube. 

    About the contributors:

    Michaela Benson is Professor in Public Sociology at Lancaster University, co-lead of the ESRC-funded project Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit, and host and producer of Who do we think we are? Tweets @michaelacbenson

    Chantelle Lewis is Junior Research Fellow in Black British Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, co-host and founder of the anti-racist podcast Surviving Society, and Deputy Director of Leading Routes. Tweets @ChantelleJLewis

    George Kalivis is a doctoral researcher in Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, artist and architect.
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    1 hr and 28 mins
  • S1 E3 How the Commonwealth Immigration Acts laid the foundations for the Windrush Deportation Scandal

    S1 E3 How the Commonwealth Immigration Acts laid the foundations for the Windrush Deportation Scandal
    Nov 12 2021
    How did changes in the UK's immigrations laws in the 1960s and 1970s set the stage for the Windrush deportation scandal? What can we learn about the racialised politics of belonging and migration in Britain today from looking at the historical transformation of immigration legislation? In this episode, we look at how immigration controls were introduced in ways that explicitly restricted the movement to and settlement in the UK of Britain's racialised colonial citizens. Host Michaela Benson explains how changes in law which made some British citizens deportable from the UK and how these transformations in law were caught up in the transformation of Britain's colonies in nation-states, how the shifting relationships between Britain and its former colonies led to some people falling between the gaps as Britain tried to restrict the settlement of their own citizens. George Kalivis goes back into the archive to remind us of the history of deportation, highlighting how deportation was introduced through the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1962 to permit the deportation from the UK for those from Britain's colonies who were convicted of offences punishable with imprisonment. And they are joined by Elsa Oommen, independent scholar and visiting researcher at Goldsmiths and the University of Warwick, to discuss in more detail the historical back story to the Windrush Deportation Scandal; the legislative changes which mean that some colonial citizens living in the UK had their right to abode in the UK, their rights systematically eroded witout their knowledge; the litany of mistakes that led to the devastating and deadly effects for their lives and well-being in the context of the Hostile Environment; and what this can tell us about how questions of citizenship and migration are caught up in the contemporary politics of belonging in Britain.    Access the full episode transcript In this episode we cover … The historical back story to the Windrush Deportation ScandalThe Commonwealth Immigration Acts of the 1960s and 1970sHow Britain’s colonial citizens were made deportable and why this matters for making sense of the racialisation at the heart of questions of migration and belonging in Britain today Quote What has been quite stark to me is how the Government can go to extreme lengths in ensuring that some people are always made to belong and how some citizens, or some people could be citizens from the get-go, but could be made to feel like they are nothing and deportable; this what is the most striking revelation from my ongoing research, that there is really a continuum in which you can be a Commonwealth citizen but you can always be treated as a Commonwealth migrant. — Elsa Oommen   Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? To find out more about the Windrush Deportation Scandal, we recommend consulting Wendy Williams’ Windrush Lessons Learned Review. You can find out more about Elsa and her research here. Her research funded by The Sociological Review with long-term Caribbean residents in the UK and the historical back story to the Hostile Environment is still in progress. Her wider research focuses on youth mobility to the UK, a part of the immigration regime that has not received much notice. You can read her work about the experiences of youth mobility workers in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. We’d also like to recommend her recent piece for Discover Society, which considered the Youth Mobility Scheme as a route to settlement in the UK for young Hong Kongers leaving HK SAR in the wake of political oppression. Our recommended reading of the week is Kathleen Paul’s 1997 book Whitewashing Britain, and in particular Chapter 5 Keeping Britain White.   Call to action You can subscribe to the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.
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    24 mins
  • S1 E4 How the British Nationality Act 1981 laid the foundations for a stateless population within Britain's borders

    S1 E4 How the British Nationality Act 1981 laid the foundations for a stateless population within Britain's borders
    Nov 26 2021
    What do we think citizenship is? When you think of citizenship you probably think of it as progressive, as giving rights to people. But what if it wasn’t? In this episode, we look at the darker side of British citizenship where, over time, who has access to the rights of citizens has become increasingly restricted. Host Michaela Benson explores the British Nationality Act 1981 (BNA1981) in a little bit more detail, which set the stage for British citizenship as we know it today. She highlights some of the headlines of this act from the how this mapped citizenship onto the territorial borders of the United Kingdom and stratification of citizens to how this removed some of the gender discrimination within nationality law by permitting women to pass on their citizenship to their children. George Kalivis goes back into the archives to explore the concerns raised about the proposed removal of birthright citizenship. They are joined by Imogen Tyler, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University who talks about how the changes to nationality legislation through BNA 1981 set the stage for people to be born stateless within the UK’s borders and explores how nationality legislation is designed to exclude Britain’s postcolonial and migrant populations from the rights of citizenship.    Access the full episode transcript In this episode we cover …   The British Nationality Act 1981  The removal of the right to citizenship for those born in the UK and its racialised consequences  How citizenship is caught up in the global migration industry  Quote  When we think about citizenship, our normative way of thinking about it would be as something that is quite progressive, something that gives in a way or something within a liberal framework that gives rights to people, and that people have these fundamental rights that are protected in law and protected in a constitution.  I suppose when I was thinking about the relationship to Britain is because we don’t have that written constitution, that founding constitution, then when citizenship starts to appear in law, or in legal and parliamentary statutes, and in debates about those statutes, it really appears not in a progressive context; it starts to appear in relationship to borders and migration.  Imogen Tyler   Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?  You can find out more about Imogen and her work here. She is on Twitter @profimogentyler.   The article we discuss in the episode is Designed to Fail, published in the journal Citizenship Studies. We also recommend her books Revolting subjects and Stigma.  If you are interested in understanding birthright citizenship and what this means in terms of global inequalities, our recommende book of this week is Ayelet Shachar’s The birthright lottery   Call to action  You can subscribe to the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.   To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, visit our blog and follow us on Twitter and Instagram.  
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    26 mins
  • S1 E5 What can the UK’s citizenship test tell us about the shape of Britishness today?

    S1 E5 What can the UK’s citizenship test tell us about the shape of Britishness today?
    Dec 10 2021
    What do you know about the UK’s citizenship test? What do you think it tests for and how? What do you think it can tell us about the shape Britishness today? In this episode, we look in-depth at the developing UK’s citizenship testing regime from its introduction in 2002 to its current form. Presenter Michaela Benson explores how in 2002 the then Labour Government introduced the Life in the UK test, language testing and compulsory citizenship ceremonies for those seeking to naturalise as British citizens. She highlights in particularly how these changes took place against the backdrop of 9/11, government policies on multiculturalism, integration and community cohesion. George Kalivis uncovers the story of the first person to take the citizenship test in Welsh. They are joined by Anne-Marie Fortier, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, who talks about how the citizenship test is best understood as part of an ongoing process through which people are moulded into desirable and deserving citizens. As she describes, this is a deeply unsettling process that reveals uncertainty lies at the heart of the process, revealing that citizenship may not be as secure as it is so often imagined. You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website. In this episode we cover … The 2002 introduction of the UK’s citizenship testing regimeWhat looking at the citizenship test can tell us about Britishness and belongingHow the process of becoming a British citizen further consolidates the relationship between the English language and being British. Quote … citizenisation starts from the premise that migrants have a citizenship deficit, in the sense that they have to be made into citizens in order to be given then the formal status of citizenship through these different tests and other forms … in doing that it also uncitizenises them, it assumes that they are not citizens from another country, or it disregards the citizenship of another country but it also disregards the fact that these individuals might be active citizens informally, without the status; they might be active citizens, working in the country where they are residing, paying taxes in the country where they are residing, voting in the country where they are residing.   Anne-Marie Fortier Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode? You can find out more about Anne-Marie and her work here. She is occasionally on Twitter @AMFortierLancs. We were discussing her book Uncertain Citizenship, published this year by Manchester University Press. If you are interested in her work on language and citizenship testing, we recommend her 2018 journal article On (not) speaking English: colonial legacies in language requirements for British citizenship. Our recommended reading for this week is John Clarke, Kathleen Coll, Evelina Dagnino and Catherine Neveu’s Disputing Citizenship.   Call to action You can follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed. To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.
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    31 mins
  • S1 E6 What can the Hong Kong BN(O) visa tell us about borders and belonging in Britain today?

    S1 E6 What can the Hong Kong BN(O) visa tell us about borders and belonging in Britain today?
    Jan 7 2022
      When National Security Law was imposed in Hong Kong SAR in 2020, the UK government responded by opening up a bespoke visa scheme to facilitate the migration and settlement of Hong Kongers in the UK. Upheld by the UK’s Home Office as evidence of the UK’s ‘fair and generous’ approach to immigration, on the surface it seems like an exception to the Hostile Environment. But what if all was not as it seems?   In this episode, we explore the back story to this new visa, to ask the question what can the Hong Kong BN(O) visa tell us about Britain’s borders past and present? Presenter Michaela Benson uncovers how Britain’s present-day relationship to the people of Hong Kong sits in a longer history through which the Hong Kongers had their rights eroded. George Kalivis heads into the archives to uncover how the British government responded to earlier political uprisings in Hong Kong, the 1989 protests about the Tiananmen Square massacres. And they are joined by John Vassiliou, an immigration and nationality lawyer at Shepherd and Wedderburn, who explains more about the bespoke HK BN(O) visa scheme and why it means that this is pegged to a so-called ‘useless citizenship’ status.   You can access the full transcripts for each episode over on the Rebordering Britain and Britons after Brexit website.     In this episode we cover …   Britain’s relationship to people of Hong Kong from the 1960s onwards  The Hong Kong BN(O) visa   Useless citizenships  Quote  When we think of a typical citizen of a country they usually have certain benefits like I described—and the main one is the right to live there—and a BN(O) citizen does not.  They are not on their own, there are another four types of British citizenship status that are in a similar category to this and they’ve generally been described by courts as useless citizenship statuses in the past.    — John Vassiliou   Where can you find out more about the topics in today’s episode?  You can find out more about John and his work here. He tweets @john_vassiliou1.  Read his informative pieces on the Free Movement Blog about the HK BN(O) visa including this overview of the scheme and this comment on Hong Kongers applying for political asylum in the UK.  Read Michaela’s thoughts about what the case of the Hong Kongers in British nationality legislation can tell us about the racialised politics of belonging in Britain. Here’s the full piece and a blogpost with the key points if you are short on time …   We also want to give some love to this fantastic piece by Jun Pang about how the Hong Kongers in the UK are positioned as ‘good migrants’ and why this matters in the context of the new immigration plan.    Call to action  Follow the podcast on all major podcasting platforms or through our RSS Feed.   To find out more about Who do we think we are?, including news, events and resources, follow us on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.  
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    33 mins