The origins of this book are located in my personal history and experiences as a migrant, as well as what I saw happening around me as I arrived in South Africa in late 1994 to start research for my doctorate. I am a person without a strong sense of national identity. I carry a British passport, and speak British English, but I was not born in Britain and have spent less than half my life there. I was born in a then-British colony, Kenya, to a father who was born in Britain, but raised and educated in three other British colonies, Guyana, Barbados and Trinidad, and who has only lived in Britain during his university education and in retirement. My mother is British, but her father grew up in Ireland, and she left Britain in 1954 to marry my father, and did not return for forty years.

I have spent the majority of my life living as a foreigner in countries where I hold no rights of citizenship. Until I was given permanent residence in South Africa in 2007, I have been classified as a migrant (not an immigrant) and my activities circumscribed by the kind of visa I have held. Applying for visas has allowed me to enter into the processes of inclusion and exclusion practised by the modern nation state. It has also made me aware of the privilege of my position as a white, middle-class woman with a British passport.

Involving myself in these processes, I have constantly been made aware of the vulnerability of immigrants and migrants to state practices of inclusion and exclusion and the power of immigration policy and officials. For me, there are two frustrating and humiliating aspects to the migration process. The first is my lack of power. I feel that I should have the right to live anywhere I want to in this world - perhaps invoked by my own lack of national identity. I also know that I mean no ill to any place I choose to live. But whatever my reasons, dreams or desires, the ultimate decision is not mine. That power lies with the official state apparatus of my intended destination.