Deporting Black Britons

In the last two decades, the UK has deported thousands of people to Jamaica.

Many of these 'deportees' left the Caribbean as infants and grew up in the UK. Deporting Black Britons traces the life stories of four such men who have been exiled from their parents, partners, children and friends by deportation. It explores how 'Black Britons' survive once they are returned to Jamaica, and questions what their memories of poverty, racist policing and illegality reveal about contemporary Britain.

Based on years of research with deported people and their families, Deporting Black Britons presents stories of survival and hardship in both the UK and Jamaica. These intimate portraits testify to the damage wrought by violent borders, opening up wider questions about racism, belonging and deservingness in anti-immigrant times.

‘In these extraordinary portraits of exile Luke de Noronha illustrates through human experience how racism operates in Britain and beyond. This is what we mean when we say Black Lives Matter.’ – Gary Younge, author of Dispatches from the Diaspora

‘Stories that stick in your throat and in your heart. Academic writing should be like this, less ego more poetry, because deep down we all understand that there is so much more at stake. I hope one day we look back at this beautiful terrible book and wonder how such cruelties were ever tolerated.’ – Gargi Bhattacharyya, author of Rethinking racial capitalism