ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for a rescaling of the debate about immigration and the importance of greater attention to London’s imperial history and global connections. We argue that the debate about immigration in the UK suffers from the twin limitations of presentism and parochialism. We also introduce the diverse backgrounds and migration histories of our participants as a way to counter these limitations, to show how their lives carry the historical traces of an alternative history of London’s relationship to the wider world. We also discuss how authorised and fugitive forms of mobility are a response to the accidents of birth, what Kearns and Reid-Henry refer to as ‘geographical luck’ (Kearns and Reid-Henry 2009).
