EXAMINING the history of immigration legislation from 1905 onwards, law lecturer Nadine El-Enany argues in this book that immigration controls are primarily designed to “maintain Britain as a racially and colonially configured space,” where non-white people are subjected to unspecified “state racial terror.”

Extending the argument, El-Enany maintains that non-white former subjects of the empire and their [[{"fid":"24170","view_mode":"inlineright","fields":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false},"link_text":null,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"1":{"format":"inlineright","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":false,"field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":false}},"attributes":{"class":"media-element file-inlineright","data-delta":"1"}}]]descendants have had the door shut on them by immigration controls in a way that prevents them from sharing in the wealth that colonialism helped to bring to Britain.

As a result, British immigration law serves primarily to legitimise ongoing theft of colonial wealth and, says the author, must therefore be understood as “being on a continuum of colonialism.”