The conclusion draws together the overall themes of the book, looking at individual experiences of inequality, the problem of shared experiences that obscure structural inequalities, and the long-term and long-standing nature of inequalities.The conclusion defends the book’s project of making inequalities visible in order to tailor appropriate solutions. Making inequality visible suggests the need to develop appropriate theories of inequality and culture. The book concludes by thinking through what strong and weak theories of culture and inequality might look like, and what solutions they might suggest to the problems we have made visible in our analysis.Ultimately the conclusion restates the value of culture, and the need to challenge inequality so that everyone can experience the way that culture is good for you.

The chapter first describes how deportation is actually arranged between the UK and Jamaican governments, before discussing the Open Arms Drop in Centre and the National Organization of Deported Migrants (NODM), two local NGOs whose work supporting deported migrants is made possible by UK aid funds. Both Open Arms and NODM were funded through Official Development Assistance, as part of the Reintegration and Rehabilitation Programme. This means that to situate deportation in wider political context, we need to think about contemporary meanings of development. The chapter shows that contemporary UK development policy is centrally preoccupied with security, bordering and trade, all of which concern the management of mobilities. Immigration controls should therefore be considered in relation to the wider government of mobility, which can advance our understanding of the connection between race, citizenship and mobility discussed in the previous chapter. In short, race and racism are constituted by relations of mobility, and this insight allows us to better describe racism in our times.

argues that the motor force of the corporation is driven by the necessity for capital to reproduce itself. And as part of this ongoing reproduction of capital, corporations are involved in a continual struggle to overcome nature’s limits. It shows that the capitalist corporation was absolutely central to the long project of European colonisation; the corporation became the primary vehicle used by investors and by colonising governments to devour nature and human labour. The extraction of natural resources, particularly from colonised lands, was done on a scale and at a rate that would not have been possible without the colonial corporation. If the architecture of the corporation made it ideal for colonial adventure, its current forms are designed for neo-colonialism. This adaptation of the modern corporation has expanded its capacity to devour nature, as if there were no limits to the exploitation of nature itself

argues that regulation in capitalist societies has a dual function. On one hand, it demands the promotion of a “political economy of speed” that prioritises economic growth, and on the other hand, it demands control of activities that are harmful to the environment. It is this contradiction that makes some people pessimistic about our reliance on states to protect, and indeed frames the commentary to the original 1973 formulation of the crime of ecocide. To have a law of ecocide on the statute books would only be significant if it was accompanied by the control or banning of the full range of commercial activities that are currently licenced. But even then, a series of prosecutions against senior individuals, or indeed against a corporation itself, is not going to precipitate the shift in the structure of the economic system that we need. The effective regulation of ecocide requires that we control the start-point of production and distribution of things – not just change the pace of the political economy of speed.

Chapter 3 describes Ricardo’s life growing up in the West Midlands. Ricardo was subject to intense police harassment, and the chapter argues firstly that racist policing makes some non-citizens more vulnerable to deportation power than others. Importantly, however, deportation not only reflects racism in wider society, it is also part of shifting how racism gets articulated thereafter. In other words, immigration controls produce as well as reflect racism. Painfully, Ricardo’s older brother was also deported a few years before him and killed in Montego Bay two years after his return. Ricardo is doing well in Jamaica, all things considered – he has work, housing and is starting a new family – while his brother, Delon, did not get the chance.

explores the key twists and turns in the history of the corporation and foregrounds core ideas that have shaped its development. The chapter begins by outlining how the corporate person is established as a kind of superhuman subject that exists as an entity distinct from the members who invest in it. The peculiar concept of “corporate personhood” was shaped throughout history with one primary purpose in mind: to provide commercial incentives to those investors. Chapter 1 shows how the corporate person was freed to do this as it gained status as a contracting party and a legal subject in commercial law. The corporation is described in this chapter as a “structure of irresponsibility”; it is an institution that is designed to dehumanise social relationships, and guarantee indifference to human suffering and environmental degradation. It is by uniing the theory and practice that shaped the evolution of the corporation that we begin to understand why the form that the contemporary corporation takes is probably as close as we could get to a model organisation that is capable of destroying the world.

The chapter presents the first analysis of gender and cultural occupations that uses data from the ONS-LS. The analysis pinpoints key moments where women leave the labour force for cultural occupations. In doing so this sets up a more general discussion of gender discrimination. The academic literature has demonstrated that a variety of gender-based discrimination exists in cultural occupations. Policy and practitioners have focused on parenting. The chapter analyses the impact of parenting, showing how it is a crucial moment for women leaving cultural occupations, but also that it is not the only explanation for gender discrimination. Women experience discrimination as individuals, suggesting the need for structural solutions to these problems, solutions that have to come from organisations. As the chapter’s analysis of interview data shows, the shared experience of parenting as a problem for individuals obscures the inequalities that characterise cultural occupations.

Chapter 7 first describes the hardships deported people face in Jamaica, which were only hinted at in previous chapters. It focuses on poverty, violence, insecurity, ill-health and unemployment. These post-deportation experiences are situated in historical and global context. The chapter traces contemporary Jamaican economic and social relations through slavery and colonialism, before offering a broad theorisation of citizenship in global perspective. Ultimately, the chapter argues that citizenship is a global regime for the management of unequal populations, fixing people in space and in law. This fixing in space and law reaffirms global inequalities formed through colonialism, and in this way citizenship reproduces colonial-racial hierarchies in the present. Put another way, citizenship might appear to be a neutral and eminently sensible system for dividing up the global population, but it does so along grooves and map lines formed through colonialism. As a result, citizenship works as a system of colonial forgetting and racial disavowal.