Devyani Prabhat’s groundbreaking book examines the multifarious ways in which law operates with borders, demarcating not only nations and territories, but people and migrants, residents and foreigners. From worldwide to the nation, family to the workplace, this interdisciplinary study explores the question of who belongs, immigration and citizenship, and conduct and national security through a historical and political lens.

The word 'alien' should be replaced with 'non-citizen' or 'foreign national' in UK case law and legislation. Legal transplantation of the term from England to other countries such as Australia and the United States which were part of the British Empire, and are largely populated by European settlers, resulted in departures from its original usage to mean non-subject. It was used to control foreign populations, as well as those already present long-term within these countries (including indigenous populations) in a deeply racialised manner took place. In the UK, exclusion of former colonised subjects from the British Isles was attempted by removal of subjecthood status and associated legal barriers to their entry and residence rather than through identifying aliens. While in present-day UK, statutory instruments do not use the term alien very often, in Australia it is a specific constitutional power. In the United States, the term alien is part of many statutes including those wholly unrelated to immigration or nationality. Yet in other similar Empire-linked settled jurisdictions which also borrowed the term from Britain, such as New Zealand and Canada, the word alien was dropped from modern immigration and nationality statutes altogether in order to avoid its pejorative connotations. The implication of this comparative analysis is that the word alien is far less entrenched in current UK law than it is in Australia or the US, and the UK may be able to adopt similar changes as New Zealand and Canada.

Applying nation branding literature and the work of Erving Goffman on dramaturgy to the situation of asylum-seeking children in Norway and in the UK, this paper develops a comparative framework for understanding why child rights appear to be de-prioritised in the current climate of ‘migration control’. The paper identifies historically grounded differential approaches towards child rights and children in the two countries, which currently appear to merge into a common trajectory of migration control, framed in terms of national security and economic productivity. It explores similar tensions in both countries between the discourses of national migration management on the one hand and children's welfare and rights on the other. It finds that universal rights which should protect the welfare of all children are limited and fragmented by ideas of nationalism and foreignness. Despite a more robust legal framework for child rights, Norway is on a similar pathway as the UK; a worrying indictment of how nations fulfil their obligations towards children.

In this MacDermott Annual Lecture, Professor Devyani Prabhat looks at current developments in immigration, nationality and asylum law and evaluates these in terms of the core ingredients of the rule of law. Specifically, the focus is on two aspects of the rule of law as elaborated on by Lord Bingham in his classic exposition on the rule of law (2011.) First, Bingham asserts that ‘Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion’ is a fundamental requirement of the rule of law; and, second, Bingham states that ‘the rule of law requires compliance by the state with its obligations in international law as in national law’. The examples Professor Prabhat analyses in the lecture are that of the East African Asians who could not enter the United Kingdom (UK) with their British passports in the 1960s and 1970s; the Windrush generation and the hostile environment of immigration control; immigration control of European Union nationals in the UK after Brexit; developments in cancellation of British Citizenship; and new legislation and proposals on asylum in the UK. Do these changes in the scope and application of the law comply with the rule of law in general and with the two specific principles on ‘law not discretion’ and ‘international law compliance’ in particular? While answering this question, Professor Prabhat explains how the different legal categories in immigration, nationality and asylum are distinct but are often conflated or confused with each other. Executive discretion should be narrow for nationality and asylum matters to conform with international law, whereas it can be wider for immigration so long as principles of fairness and non-discrimination are adhered to in each instance.