Spaces of concern: Parliamentary discourse on Britain's overseas territories

Abstract

This article explores discussion of Britain's overseas territories in the UK Parliament. It provides quantitative and qualitative analyses of Hansard from the start of the Coalition Government in 2010 until the prorogation of Parliament in 2017, identifying dominant concerns regarding financial transparency, sovereignty disputes, and whether Parliament should legislate for the territories. The character of debate on the overseas territories suggests first that they occupy a particular and equivocal “space of concern” within the national legislature, and second that this attention often intersects and overlaps with a focus on other places and spatial scales in which concern for the overseas territories is sometimes secondary or subsumed. This discourse highlights uncertainty and questioning over the nature of the overseas territories’ relationship with the UK. The inclusion of the affairs of distant territories within national political discourse provides a rich and unique example of the disjunction between sovereignty, state and territory, and highlights the ongoing complexity and ambiguity of the UK's political geography.

An intolerable burden: Racist territoriality in theUnited StatesSupreme Court's Insular Cases

“…The United States is certainly not alone in its history of racism and territorial expansion, nor in its maintenance of non-self-governing territories. Both Britain and France maintain overseas territories claimed during periods of imperial expansion, whose residents often have fewer rights than those living in the metropole; for example, the governors of British Overseas Territories are appointed by the Queen rather than popularly elected, and do not have guaranteed Parliamentary representation (Harmer, 2018;McConnell & Dittmer, 2018). The influence of racism in (re) making territory historically deserves far more attention than it has received, with country-specific analyses and transnational comparisons both currently wanting.…”

Færøske og grønlandske mandater i Folketinget

“…Saerligt har forskere beskaeftiget sig med dette spørgsmål i en australsk, newzealandsk og canadisk kontekst, hvorimod parlamentarisk repraesentation af nordiske urfolk isaer er blevet studeret i en mere lokal optik (Berg og Saglie, 2015;White, 2016;Xanthaki og O'Sullivan, 2009). For så vidt angår periferiers repraesentation i metropoler, kan Karapetians analyse af de franske og hollandske periferiers forskellige repraesentation i deres metropoler samt Harmers analyse af parlamentariske diskurser om britiske oversøiske territorier fremhaeves (Harmer, 2018;Karapetian, 2020).…”

Degrowth and the Blue Belt: Rethinking marine conservation in the British Overseas Territories

“…Constantine (2015) examined these informal geopolitics, highlighting how, following a visit to the territories in 1958, Anglesey MP, Cledwyn Hughes became defacto constituency Member of Parliament (MP) to St Helena. With just a few brief exceptions, the BOTs have not come to prominence in UK public debate collectively ( Harmer, 2018 ). Individually, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have recently been publicly implicated in the ‘Panama Papers’ scandal ( Pegg, 2018 ).…”