Punishing Politics: Race and the Imprisonment of Foreign Nationals in England & Wales

• In Event: Imprisonment, Racialization and Right-Wing Populism in Europe II

Abstract

In 2000, there were 5,586 foreign national prisoners in England and Wales and in 2023 the number was 10,321, showing that the foreign national prisoner population has nearly doubled over the last two decades. Alongside various government policies to deport as many foreign national offenders as possible, the rise in the foreign national prison population nevertheless, is likely to be due to a multitude of factors including the increase in global mobility and ever widening reach of the crimmigration system. In this paper I reflect on how shifting conceptions of race and the advance of right-wing politics in Britain continue to inform the criminalization of those considered not to belong. I also explore how this connects to the colonial history of the legal and spatial exclusion of racial minorities based on criminality that has long shaped the British response to immigration.

Author

• Alpa Parmar, University of Cambridge