Over the past 500 years, Western migration, colonisation, enslavement, imperialism, violence and wealth extraction have shaped the world we live in. They have created massive inequalities of wealth between countries and left people in many regions exposed to more violence, more poverty and at greater risk from climate change.
This is as much a problem of the present as it is a matter of history. Western governments continue to extract wealth from – and exert violence on – many countries around the world. Their actions are driving increased displacement and refugee migration.
But when the people displaced by current policies or the legacies of old ones try to reach the UK to ask for safety, far too often they are pushed back, detained, deported, and killed. And they are overwhelmingly people of colour. In fact, many are the direct descendants of people who faced the violence of the British Empire in the past.
