Ep 20: Deporting Black Britons. With Luke de Noronha (English).

De Verbranders

In our conversation today, we talk to Luke de Noronha about his book Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica. Meant as a contribution to the collective struggle against racism and deportation, the book tells the life stories of four men who grew up in the UK, were deported to Jamaica following criminal conviction, and now struggle to survive and rebuild their lives in the Caribbean. We start the conversation talking about Luke’s process of conducting research for this book. We talk about his friendship with the four men he writes about, and what this friendhip meant – and continues to mean - for his work as a researcher. We also talk about Jamaica, the legacies of slavery, colonialism and ongoing neocolonialism that explain Jamaica’s relative position to the UK, and the immense amount of ignorance on the effects of these legacies in the European nation-states we speak from. We end our conversation discussing Luke’s forthcoming book on border abolition, called ‘against borders: the case for abolition’ which he wrote together with Gracie Mae Bradley. In it, Luke and Gracie argue we must transform society and our relationships to one another, and build a world in which everyone has the freedom to move and to stay.