Colonialism and Migration in Global Perspective

Colonialism has fundamentally shaped human mobility. Yet analysis of colonialism’s influence on contemporary migration politics and governance is highly uneven, being frequently discussed in some countries with evident colonial legacies, while rarely in others. Amid claims that settler and ex-metropole societies are “converging” in migration approaches, this project redresses major limitations in these debates by deepening analysis historically and broadening it geographically.

Drawing on the humanities to excavate complex social meanings and identities surrounding colonialism, and on the social sciences to analyse how these are mobilised, this project analyses diverse settler and ex-metropole contexts on all six inhabited continents, many of which are infrequently compared. This project breaks new ground through a historically rooted, global study illuminating the complexity of how colonialism shapes migration governance today.

Principal Investigator: Dr Mike Slaven, University of Lincoln