The Commonwealth's Post-Britannic Vision: Educational Mobility and the Governance of Postcolonial Migration, 1950–1990

This article argues that the Commonwealth’s post-Britannic vision, articulated through a liberal language of sovereignty, voluntary association and partnership, emerged in response to rising anti-colonial nationalism. This vision encompassed both the promotion of educational exchange as a form of post-imperial diplomacy, and Britain’s simultaneous restriction of migration from the New Commonwealth. Focusing on the experiences of South Asian overseas students in post-war British universities and drawing on oral history testimonies, alongside administrative records, this article identifies educational mobility as a key site where the Commonwealth’s cosmopolitan ideals intersected with Britain’s tightening immigration regime from the 1960s. The testimonies reveal experiences of discrimination, financial precarity, expectations of comportment within British institutional and social life, and the contractual and normative obligations of return imposed on scholarship recipients. They also reveal anti-colonial political subjectivities that unsettled the assumption of a compliant scholar who would be sympathetic to British interests on returning to their home countries. This article thus locates the contradictions of the Commonwealth’s liberal internationalism in the racially circumscribed governance of postcolonial migration in post-war Britain.