Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control

About this book

"Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control provides the most detailed account of the virginity testing controversy in the late 1970s, and demonstrates that this abusive practice, which was endured by South Asian women for more than a decade, was part of a wider culture of mistreatment and discrimination that occurred within the immigration system authorized by the state. Using recently opened government documents, Smith and Marmo offer a unique insight into this matter and uncover the extent to which these women were scrutinized, interrogated and subject to physical examination at the border. Combining cutting edge criminological theory and historical research, this book proposes that the contemporary British immigration control system should be viewed as an attempt to replicate colonial hierarchies upon migrants in the post-imperial era. For this reason, the abuses of human rights at the border became a secondary issue to the need of the post-imperial British nation-state to enforce strict immigration controls"--