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This dissertation analyses the politics of British immigration policy formation by drawing upon the disciplines of migration theory, political theory, cultural studies, international political economy, history, and postcolonial theory. Employing a Foucauldian and Gramscian methodology, it presents an analysis of British migration policy in the development of colonial capitalism as a framework for its analysis of the contemporaiy dynamics of mobility control under conditions of neo-liberal globalisation. While focussing on the movement of persons, it examines the articulation of different forms of mobility control - those over the movements of people, labour, finance, trade, services, in relation to the sphere of political discourse and policy formation. The thesis seeks to examine the development of 'political' and 'economic' migration regimes in these periods. It offers a longue duree analysis of the manner in which they have been articulated under liberal and neo-liberal constellations of governance, governmentalities and discourse fields. The thesis thus seeks to investigate the manner in which regimes based in colonial, liberal, and racialised ideologies relates to the contemporary paradigm of 'managed migration' pertaining to conditions of globalisation, neo-liberalism, and a corresponding communitarianism. Finally, it seeks to analyse the manner in which these articulated mobility regimes have been necessary to British practices of statecraft.