Deportation, racism and multi-status Britain: immigration control and the production of race in the present

In this paper, I examine the experiences of Jason and Ricardo, two men who were deported to Jamaica from the UK following criminal conviction. This ethnographic inquiry into deportation provides a rich and complex account of race-making at different scales. Theorizing the connections between racialization and illegalization offers a productive framework for the study of racism in multi-status Britain. The paper argues that the border is central to race’s contemporary mobilization, not only in the lives of individuals like Jason and Ricardo but also for those interpellated as “natives”.