Back in 2015, an emboldened David Cameron pledged to build a £25million prison in Jamaica. A grotesque picture of a depleted island stacked with prisons, filled up by criminals flooded the minds of the British public. In a desperate attempt to address the themes of social deprivation, this plan under British foreign policy drew on the colonial levers from the 1800s – a relationship with Jamaica that is maintained by the Commonwealth. For us in Britain, though we have been sheltered from this reality, the recent passage of the Nationality and Borders bill is a reason for us all to be more concerned about the colonial power dynamics that spill into the UK’s current relationship with borders and identity. 

I speak to Cashh, formerly known as Cashtastic, the 27-year-old Jamaican singer and artist who is no stranger to these power dynamics. Cashh was deported to Jamaica seven years ago due to a Home Office decision that he had no legal right to be in the UK and had overstayed as a minor. Through his account of witnessing and passing through the relics of transatlantic colonialism and the experience of deportation, the insights and impacts are not too far from his tongue. His latest album Return Of The Immigrant (R.O.T.I.), is a poetic acclamation of being a migrant – born in Jamaica and growing up in Britain as a young boy. His grasp of this reality for many Jamaicans who have been deported, corrects both the over-simplified narrative of Jamaica and the idea of a ‘deportee’.