Image: Windrush solidarity event in Brixton, April 2018. Yui Mok/PA Images. All rights reserved.
On Sunday Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned following the furore over the Windrush scandal: perhaps the first time a Home Secretary has faced sustained criticism for being too tough on the question of immigration. We should be cautious, however, in celebrating this apparent change in public mood. In fact, what we are witnessing is the re-drawing of the line separating those who belong from those who do not: ‘Windrush migrants’ are brought into the fold of the national ‘we’, while ‘illegal immigrants’ are constructed as manifest outsiders.
