Race, gender and the body in British immigration control
Subtitle: subject to examination
By: Evan Smith and Marinella Marmo, Flinders University, Australia
Contributors: Marmo, Marinella
Series: Migration, diasporas and citizenship
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 196
ISBN-13: 9781137280435
Subjects: Women immigrants; Government policy; History; Emigration and immigration; Virginity; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Civics & Citizenship; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Freedom & Security / Human Rights; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Emigration & Immigration; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies
Description: "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"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 185-194) and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note:; title: Introduction1. Decolonisation and the Creation of the British Immigration Control System 2. The Border as a Filter: Maintaining the Divide in the Post-Imperial Era 3. Reorienting the South Asian Female Body: the Practice of 'Virginity Testing' and the Treatment of Migrant Women 4. Deny, Normalise and Obfuscate: the Government Response to the Virginity Testing Practice and Other Physical Abuses 5. The Postcolonial World Stage: Immigration and Britain's International Reputation 6. Discrimination by other Means: Further Restrictions on Migrant Women and Children under the Conservatives Conclusion.