SLEIGHTS OF HAND: BORDERING, FREE PORTS, AND THE RACIAL CAPITALIST ROOTS OF ECONOMIC NATIONALIST STRATEGIES IN THE US AND THE UK

Abstract

Sleight-of-hand economic nationalist strategies by recent administrations of the US and UK emphasize the ‘freedom’ of those selectively imagined as belonging to the nation while quietly but pivotally discouraging human mobility and encouraging elite capital mobility. The US and UK’s distinct but connected recent policies—Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) and Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategies—are not exceptional or unique to those specific administrations of each country, but are embedded within long-term, interconnected transnational racial capitalist projects. The sleights of hand promoting selective national publics’ freedom are not only hypocritical but complex to see, especially with White-impaired lenses. This article examines two interrelated technologies of power on which these economic nationalist strategies have relied, bordering and free zones, contributing to research on the complex, varied, and experience-inflected responses US and UK residents have to these policies.