Far from being a meritocratic and equalising device, the Family Migration Visa racialises certain migrant-citizen families

Joseph Turner argues that we need to see recent changes which mean that British citizens can only live with non-EU spouses/partners if they earn over £18,600 p/a, as part of a broader history of strategies which have managed the intimate relations of citizens. He suggests that the visa retains a familiar function to the colonial practices of marriage restriction and other policies which have managed migrant/citizens families across the 20thcentury. The Family Migration Visa is treated as a strategy that regulates whom can live with, raise a family with, be intimate with whom in modern Britain.