Internal colonisation: The intimate circulations of empire, race and liberal government

Abstract

This article proposes that 'internal colonisation' provides a necessary lens through which to explore the relationship between violence and race in contemporary liberal government. Contributing to an increasing interest in race in IR, this article proposes that whilst racism remains a vital demarcation in liberal government between forms of worthy/unworthy life, this is continually shaped by colonial histories and ongoing projects of Empire which manifest in the Global North and South in familiar, if not identical ways. In unpacking the concept of internal colonisation and its intellectual history from Black Studies into colonial historiography and political geography, I highlight how (neo)metropolitan states such as Britain, were always active imperial terrain and subjected to forms of colonisation. This recognises how metropole and colonies where bounded together through colonisation and how knowledge and practices of rule were appropriated onto a heterogeneity of racialised and undesirable subjects both within colonies and Britain. Bringing the argument up to date, I show how internal colonisation remains diverse and dispersed under liberal empireenhanced through the war on terror. To do this, I sketch out how forms of 'armed social work' central to counterinsurgency in the Afghanistan and Iraq, is also central to the management of sub-populations in Britain through the counterterrorism strategy Prevent. Treating (neo)metropoles such as the UK as part of imperial terrain helps us recognise the way that knowledge/practices of colonisation have worked across multiple populations and been invested in mundane sites of liberal government. This brings raced histories into closer encounters with the (re)making of a raced present.

The fire this time: Grenfell, racial capitalism and the urbanisation of empire

“…While, in IR, there has been a growing interest in questions of race, colonialism and their centrality for the study of world politics (Anievas et al, 2014; Carrozza et al, 2017; Sabaratnam, 2017; Shilliam, 2015; Vitalis, 2015), scholars have predominantly focused their analyses on North–South encounters. As Joseph Turner (2017: 2) explains, this is underwritten by ‘a temporal and spatial schema which often treats colonisation as something done by Northern states to the Global South’. This focus is not without its merits, but scholars have sometimes been prone to overlook how ‘violence and racism in the Global South is connected to the treatment of populations in the Global North’ (Turner, 2017: 2).…”

“…As Joseph Turner (2017: 2) explains, this is underwritten by ‘a temporal and spatial schema which often treats colonisation as something done by Northern states to the Global South’. This focus is not without its merits, but scholars have sometimes been prone to overlook how ‘violence and racism in the Global South is connected to the treatment of populations in the Global North’ (Turner, 2017: 2). Responding to this lacunae, in this article, I interrogate the co-constitution of Western ‘homelands’ and colonial frontiers through a focus on the distinctively imperial political economy of neoliberal urbanism.…”

Bordering intimacy

“…Nor how the life chances of many, in terms of education, health, labour market access or immigration status are most powerfully stratified by race (Shilliam 2018;Danewid 2019). Nor how the UK continually polices racialised groups through counter-insurgency tactics born out of colonial war (Sabir 2017;Turner 2018).…”

“…It is this broader form of racialised governance that I refer to as 'bordering' . In showing how these sites are forms of bordering, I connect the treatment of people moving as migrants to that of settled black and South Asian communities within Britain who are frequently policed as 'internal colonies' (Turner 2018). The emphasis here is on the interconnection between the racialised governance and bordering of both 'migrants' and 'citizens' .…”

Racial sovereignty

“…For example, in the case of settler-colonialism, core and periphery are not spatially distinct and geographically distant but congealed ‘on selfsame land’ (Tuck et al, 2014). These binaries collapse also when grappling with the racialisation of ‘non-indigenous’ peoples within the European metropolis (Bhattacharyya, 2018: 18–19; Turner, 2018). There is a ‘spatial immediacy’ (la paperson, 2017: 3) to these kinds of racialisation, which does not comfortably map onto classical spatial binaries.…”