Category: X-rays
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Age disputes and the non-medical use of x-rays in the UK border control system
Tory backbencher David Davies has recently called for dental x-rays to verify the ages of refugees coming from Calais. Although these calls were dismissed by the Home Office and the British Dental Association, this is an issue that has lingered since the 1970s. Below is a post based on an article that Marinella Marmo and…
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Out Now! Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control has been published
This is a quick post to announce that our new book Race, Gender and the Body in British Immigration Control has been published by Palgrave Macmillan and hopefully should be ready to be shipped out soon. I know the hardback is costly, but we hope that people encourage their university, college or council library to…
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The ‘virginity testing’ controversy 35 years on
On February 1, 1979, Melanie Phillips wrote an explosive piece in The Guardian about the practice of ‘virginity testing’ that was experienced by an Indian woman at Heathrow during her attempt to pass through border control. Over the following two months, it came to light that theses ‘tests’ were much more widely practiced than initially…
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New journal article – ‘The Myth of Sovereignty: British Immigration Control in Policy and Practice in the Nineteen-Seventies’
This is just a quick post to announce that our long-awaited article in Historical Research journal has now been published online through early view and can found here. The title of the article is ‘The Myth of Sovereignty: British Immigration Control in Policy and Practice in the Nineteen-Seventies’, with the following abstract: This article explores how…
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New journal article: Examining the body through technology
I am pleased to announce that the latest issue of Anti-Trafficking Review has published an article by myself and Marinella Marmo on the non-medical use of x-rays in British immigration control history, especially their use for assessing the age of teenage migrants. The article is titled ‘Examining the Body through Technology: Age Disputes and the UK Border…
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Labour’s 1983 manifesto and immigration
The folk at Socialist Unity have republished in full Labour’s 1983 manifesto, A New Hope for Britain (notoriously known as ‘the longest suicide note in history’). There is a section on nationality and immigration, which was the first time that a substantial section of Labour’s manifesto was dedicated to these issues. Previously there had been a short…
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The UKBA and the ‘burden of proof’
This story about the UKBA demanding ‘proof’ of someone’s sexual preference if they seek asylum after fleeing persecution for being gay, lesbian or trans- is outrageous. It is another example of the testimony of the potential migrant/refugee being dismissed by the immigration authorities as ‘not credible’ and the immigration control system seeking another form of…
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My Christmas archival wishlist
On December 31, the UK National Archives will open the government records for files sentenced in 1982 under the 30 year rule (although as I pointed out in this post, some records will be kept closed for a number of reasons). As a historian of the contemporary era, I am very interested in what will…
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Some thoughts on the idea of immigration ‘control’
In 1985, the Commission for Racial Equality published a long awaited report into discrimination within the UK immigration control system. (My colleague, Marinella Marmo, and I have written about the report and its investigation here and here) I have been re-reading it and the government’s response for a paper I am currently writing on the…
New Historical Express 