Colonialism isn't over, the proof is in our passports

I am the owner of a British passport. It has never crossed my mind, when fantasizing about where I’d like to go in the world, that there would be much in my way save for an online visa application here or there. In fact, by the age of five I had lived in four different countries (although I am counting England and Wales as two, which feels a little cheeky, but you get my gist), and in total, there are 190 countries across the world which I could gain access to quite easily. According to Henley and Partners’ Global Passport Ranking, the African country whose passport gives access to the most destinations worldwide (and thus is considered more powerful) is South Africa, with a total of 106 destinations. Most African countries have access to far less. In fact, when looking at the Global Passport Ranking map, there is a clear delimitation between global north and south, with the most powerful passports all located in the global north, and all the least powerful passports in the global south.

Now, as a fairly privileged first-world Brit, I tend to see my passport simply as the key to my yearly escape from the UK’s grey skies to a country with an average temperature of at least 25 degrees, and decent all-inclusive prices. However, it doesn’t take a far step outside of my own perspective to realise that a passport can mean a lot more. A passport’s power symbolises, and is the executor of, a state’s social and economic standing in the world. A passport’s power and its country’s GDP have been shown to be positively intertwined (source). On a more fundamental level, freedom of movement, the ability to leave what one is born into in search of a ‘better life’, is greatly regarded as a human right. Why, then, is there such a clear divide between the power of passports from the global north and south?

As with many inequalities between the global north and south, it can be attributed to being the vestige of colonialism. Ah yes, a few hundred years ago our ancestors set sail across the oceans in search of new lands, and once they found these new lands were already occupied, they did not say “O alas! It seemeth another doth dwell here already. Let us hence and seek out other lands unclaimed” (I assume this is how they spoke). Instead, they conquered, murdered, raped, extinguished cultures and imposed their own. For the next few hundred years, they extracted as much as they could from said colonies: resources and labour equivalent in today’s money to billions of pounds per year. After those few hundred years (and quite a lot of fighting), we granted them their independence, and left them (in large part) to fend for themselves.

Today, many believe that colonial empires are objects of the past. I, however, challenge the idea that colonialism is behind us. Not simply because Great Britain, like other colonisers, has cunningly rebranded its colonies to ‘overseas territories’ (what’s in a name?), but because we live in a world which is still starkly divided between the colonisers and the colonies. We are born into countries where we are assigned more or less powerful passports, and although these are not all-determining, a ‘bad’ passport is a restriction before we have had a chance to breathe. 

We may be led to believe that these are simply remains of a colonial empire. That by reducing formal governmental control over its former colonies, colonisers have ceased to exert any power over them, and thus established a free and equal world. We must cease to conceive power in this way. In fact, I play this trick on my six-year-old nephew. I tell him that he can have whichever snack his heart desires, so long as he can get it himself. Little does he know, I have hidden all of the crisps, sweets and chocolate on the highest shelves that only I can reach. So, although I have given him full autonomy to eat what he pleases, I have kept all the really yummy stuff safe for myself. There is power, and control, in having access to more than others do. When a state’s passport is not powerful, it’s because a large number of states across the world are actively excluding them in their migration policies. And when powerful states exclude, they sustain a world in which their prosperity, acquired on the backs of those colonised, stays out of reach.

So, what next? If every passport in the world were made equal that would mean open borders, which in my eyes is not an entirely unappealing idea. A smaller (although still decidedly quite big) step in that direction would be what Zara Goldstone, political theory researcher at UCL, refers to as Migration as Reparation for Colonialism. Only by giving migration rights to the victims of colonisation and actively including them in our public systems can we create a world no longer dominated by colonial powers. It is by reversing the system that is sustaining this inequality that we can right past wrongs. We cannot go by ignoring centuries of mistreatment and exploitation. We must create a world in which one’s capacity to prosper is not primarily determined by where one is born. At the very least, we must acknowledge that our migration policies are perpetrating a new kind of colonialism. We must start a new phase of decolonisation.