‘Global Britain’, the coloniality of migration, and the Hong Kong BN(O) visa

Benson, Michaela (2025) ‘Global Britain’, the coloniality of migration, and the Hong Kong BN(O) visa. In: Global Hong Kong : Post-2019 Migration and the New Hong Kong Diaspora. Routledge, London, pp. 19-38. ISBN 9781040324523 (In Press)

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Abstract

In January 2021, the UK Government launched the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa, in this way offering humanitarian protections to its former colonial citizens. Introduced following the imposition of National Security Law (NSL) in Hong Kong SAR, the opening up of the visa route was part of a set of foreign policy measures spurred by (a) the UK Government’s judgement that the Sino-British Joint Declaration had been breached and (b) protesting alleged human rights abuses in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Presented as delivering on a ‘moral obligation’ resulting from the historic relationship between the British state and the Hong Kongers, the visa offers both a route out of HKSAR and support for long-term settlement in the UK. In this chapter, I critically evaluate the visa through a theoretical and conceptual framework centred on the coloniality of migration and citizenship. I situate the visa in the longer history of Britain’s bordering of the Hong Kongers, and in the context of the post-Brexit reframing of migration governance in the image of ‘Global Britain’. This detailed examination reveals the imbrication of ideology, the politics of migration, and geopolitical interests in defining the contours of the post-Brexit migration regime.