ABSTRACT
In April 2018 British Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned over the so-called Windrush scandal. A private letter to Prime Minister Theresa May leaked to the press revealed to the public the mistreatment and denial of rights of a number of British-born subjects and UK residents (the “Windrush generation”) who were accused of being in the country illegally and deported or threatened to be sent back to countries of origin they barely knew. The scandal fully exposed the “hostile environment” approach to migration put forward by May and seemingly endorsed by the Home Office (Elgot, 2018), with documents proving the aim of reaching yet a greater number of citizens of “colonial origins” as targets for repatriation. This chapter aims to trace back the origins and the escalation of an increasingly harsh British migration policy, putting it in relation to the rise of identity politics and increasingly exclusionary interpretations of the idea of “Britishness”. It will do so by taking into account mainly Conservative policies, discourses and propaganda, singling out a few episodes that represent turning points in the new attitude of Britain towards “foreigners”, within a time frame ranging from the aftermath of the Second World War to the end of the 1960s.
