ABSTRACT
In 2012 Theresa May, as Home Secretary for the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK, began to lay the foundations of the ‘hostile immigration environment’. The policy was intended to make it as difficult as possible for people to live in the UK without leave to remain. The deterrent measures that form the core of the policy include things such as introducing additional checks to prevent people without leave to remain from accessing bank accounts or driving licences, from using the NHS. The central endeavour of this chapter was to tell a story of international politics in everyday life. It was a personal story, and one of the benefits of this was that the personal nature of the story made everyday life accessible. They are united by the thread of the story running through the chapters, and by the commitment to centring on a narrative of everyday life and the use of memoir as method in international relations.
