'One island, one team, one mission': Geopolitics, sovereignty, 'race' and rendition

Abstract

This article interprets the strategies that have been associated with the war on terror against the backdrop of historical geographies of colonial violence and dispossession. It joins those who argue that wider anxieties about the sources of danger, criminality, violence and terror have become intertwined. These reveal as much about sensibilities of race, class and 'security' as they do objective dangers. Thus the article considers how, drawing on the British case, detentions and deportations marked by race are connected with and form part of an overlapping regime of 'security', 'immigration' and asylum. This is exemplified via an account of the trajectory British sovereign territory of Diego Garcia, leading to wider reflections on contemporary forms of sovereignty and the operation of 'race' in geopolitics. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.