This new episode from an evolving multi-part work opens with ghostly footage of a sugarcane plantation. A text warns us that ‘the risk of losing personhood is upon us’ and we become aware that the threat lies in the British government’s policy of hostile environment, which aims to make life difficult for illegal immigrants living in the UK. Quoting the Black Canadian writer Dionne Brand, the text refers to the Door of No Return through which Africans departed en route to a life of slavery in the Caribbean. While the recent UK Nationality and Borders Bill increases the risk to migrants, there is a glimmer of hope in the spontaneous action of hundreds of Glaswegians who successfully won the temporary release of two refugees detained by British immigration officers in May 2021.
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