This event is part of the TORCH Caribbean Studies Network.
Click here to register.
Luke de Noronha (University of Manchester) joins us to discuss his new book, Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica (MUP, 2020). The Windrush scandal brought deportation firmly into public consciousness in Britain in 2018. But Britain is not alone: some 751 Jamaicans were deported from the United States in 2019, just a fraction of the tens of thousands of Caribbean nationals deported from the United States, Britain, and Canada in recent decades. Within the Caribbean, too, borders are at issue, from Haitians in the Dominican Republic to Venezuelans in Trinidad. Building on de Noronha’s work, this session examines Caribbean (im)mobility, its implications, and our tools for understanding it.
About Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica:
“In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica. Many of these ‘deportees’ left the Caribbean as infants and grew up in the UK. Deporting Black Britons traces the life stories of four such men who have been exiled from their parents, partners, children and friends by deportation. It explores how ‘Black Britons’ survive once they are returned to Jamaica, and questions what their memories of poverty, racist policing and illegality reveal about contemporary Britain.
Based on years of research with deported people and their families, Deporting Black Britons presents stories of survival and hardship in both the UK and Jamaica. These intimate portraits testify to the damage wrought by violent borders, opening up wider questions about racism, belonging and deservingness in anti-immigrant times”.
Click here to register.
Caribbean Studies Network, TORCH Networks
