Empire may be history on paper, but its fingerprints are everywhere: in the borders that ignite conflict, the passports that determine mobility, the institutions that shape our democracies, and the hierarchies that define who belongs-and who does not. As governments wrestle with contested statues and school curricula,and as movements for racial justice and decolonisation gather pace,the question is no longer whether colonialism has a legacy,but how deeply that legacy structures contemporary life.
“Power, politics, and belonging: the lasting impacts of colonialism,” a central event at the LSE Festival, brings this question into sharp focus. Drawing on cutting-edge research and lived experience, scholars and practitioners examine how imperial logics persist in today’s global economy, international law, cultural narratives and domestic politics. From migration regimes to development policy, from memory wars to identity struggles, the discussion probes the frequently enough-unseen continuities between the colonial past and present-day inequalities.
At stake is more than past accountability. As the world confronts rising authoritarianism, climate crisis and widening social fractures, understanding the enduring architecture of colonial power is critical to reimagining fairer futures-and redefining what it means to belong in an increasingly polarised world.
Unequal foundations How colonial power structures still shape global governance and economic hierarchies
Long after formal empires dissolved, the institutional blueprints they left behind continue to structure who sets the rules of the global game-and who must live by them. From the weighted voting systems of international financial institutions to the dominance of former imperial capitals in diplomatic networks, colonial-era hierarchies are recoded as “technical” or “neutral” governance arrangements.These arrangements shape whose crises are labelled “global emergencies” and whose are dismissed as local mismanagement. They also help determine which economies have the policy space to experiment, and which are disciplined into austerity.The legacies are visible in how international law was historically used to secure trade routes, protect foreign investors and police borders, while rarely recognising Indigenous land rights or the sovereignty claims of colonised peoples.
Today’s economic architecture is built on these legacies, even as it trades in the language of development and partnership.Unequal access to capital, technology and decision‑making reinforces a pattern where:
- Debt negotiations prioritise creditor stability over public welfare in debtor states.
- Trade rules lock many countries into exporting raw materials while importing higher‑value goods.
- Data governance risks reproducing extractive models, with information flows mirroring older commodity chains.
| Institutional Arena | Colonial Legacy | Contemporary Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Global finance | Metropoles as creditor hubs | Concentrated voting power in key capitals |
| Trade regimes | Extraction-based economies | Dependence on volatile commodity exports |
| Knowledge production | Eurocentric expertise | Southern perspectives treated as “case studies” |
Everyday exclusions Colonial legacies in citizenship, migration and who gets to belong
Across former empires, the routine act of proving who you are-at a border, a benefits office, or a polling station-still reflects hierarchies forged under colonial rule. Bureaucratic categories once used to sort “subjects” from “citizens” have been repackaged into modern policies that quietly sort people into those who fully belong and those who must constantly justify their presence. Everyday experiences of scrutiny at airports, landlords’ checks on immigration status, and complex residency rules echo older systems of pass laws and racialised registries. These frictions are rarely branded as discriminatory; instead, they are framed as neutral, administrative necessities that just happen to fall hardest on people with certain passports, surnames, or skin tones. The line between inclusion and exclusion is now drawn less with guns and flags, and more with documents, databases, and deadlines.
Yet resistance to these inherited structures is also part of daily life. Communities challenge exclusionary practices through small acts-sharing legal advice in WhatsApp groups, organising neighbours to support those facing deportation, and documenting abuses that might otherwise go unseen. These responses expose how apparently technical rules are deeply political, shaping who can work, vote, or feel at home. Common patterns include:
- Document hurdles – complex or costly paperwork that disproportionately affects racialised and migrant communities.
- Hierarchies of mobility – visa regimes that privilege some nationalities while trapping others in precarious status.
- Conditional rights – access to housing, welfare or healthcare tied to shifting immigration rules.
- Racialised enforcement – policing and border checks targeted at specific bodies and neighbourhoods.
| Policy tool | Colonial echo | Everyday impact |
|---|---|---|
| Passport ranking | Hierarchies of subjects | Unequal travel freedoms |
| Hostile surroundings checks | Internal pass systems | Barriers to renting or working |
| Citizenship tests | “Civilising” missions | Cultural gatekeeping |
Decolonising the campus Rethinking curricula, research agendas and institutional memory at LSE and beyond
On campuses shaped by imperial legacies, whose stories are taught, cited and commemorated still reflects old hierarchies of power. At LSE and similar institutions, decolonising is less about erasing the past than about interrogating which narratives are centred and which are marginalised. This means questioning the dominance of Euro-American canons, scrutinising how colonialism is framed in “neutral” social science, and asking why archives overflow with some voices while others barely register. It also means confronting how lecture halls, named buildings and public art silently encode particular versions of belonging. Within this shift, students and staff are pushing for teaching that recognises empire as a structuring force in global capitalism, migration, development and security, rather than treating it as a closed historical chapter.
Change is emerging through new reading lists, collaborative research with communities historically studied but rarely heard, and critical engagement with the institution’s own archives. These efforts often focus on:
- Curricula: integrating scholarship from the Global South, Black and Indigenous thinkers, and decolonial theory across departments.
- Research agendas: designing projects with,not on,communities; interrogating funding sources and knowledge hierarchies.
- Institutional memory: recontextualising or renaming spaces, reframing exhibits, and commissioning new forms of commemoration.
| Area | Colonial Legacy | Decolonial Move |
|---|---|---|
| Teaching | Single-canon syllabi | Plural, contested canons |
| Research | Extractive fieldwork | Co-produced knowledge |
| Memory | Unquestioned founders | Context, critique, new symbols |
From critique to action Policy, community and international reforms to confront enduring colonial injustices
Reimagining justice after empire demands more than symbolic apologies; it requires a coordinated shift in how states, institutions and communities share power, resources and voice. Across the globe, we are seeing a patchwork of policy experiments, from truth commissions and reparations programmes to curriculum reforms and indigenous land rights agreements. Yet these measures often sit uneasily within systems that still privilege former imperial powers. Civil society coalitions, migrant and diaspora groups, and youth climate movements are increasingly pushing for binding obligations rather than charitable gestures, insisting that the legacies of extraction, racial hierarchy and imposed borders be treated as structural problems, not historical footnotes.
- Redistribution of wealth and resources rooted in colonial extraction
- Representation of formerly colonised communities in decision-making
- Repair through legal, educational and cultural reforms
- Recognition of historical harms in law and public memory
| Level | Key Reform Focus | Example Action |
|---|---|---|
| National | Legal redress & education | Rewriting school curricula with colonised perspectives |
| Community | Local power-sharing | Co-governance of land, housing and heritage sites |
| International | Economic & climate justice | Debt relief tied to colonial-era extraction |
At the international level, debates over climate loss and damage, sovereign debt and migration control expose how colonial hierarchies have been rebuilt through global governance and market rules. Demands for reform now target institutions such as the UN Security Council, the IMF and the World Bank, where voting power and agenda-setting still mirror an older imperial order. The challenge for policymakers is whether they are prepared to move beyond managing the symptoms of inequality – hunger, displacement, precarious labor – to renegotiating the very rules of belonging and authority. For communities shaped by empire, the shift from critique to action is not only about formal reparations, but about securing the right to define the future on their own terms.
The Conclusion
As the LSE Festival panel made clear, colonialism is not a closed chapter but a living force that continues to shape who holds power, whose voices are heard, and who feels they belong. From migration policy to museum collections, from global trade rules to everyday encounters with the state, its legacies are embedded in institutions and imaginations alike.
What happens next will depend less on grand declarations than on the slow, often uncomfortable work of redistribution and recognition: rethinking curricula, restructuring economies, reforming political systems, and reimagining solidarities across borders. For universities such as LSE, that also means interrogating their own histories and roles in producing the knowledge that underpinned empire.
If colonialism organised the world along lines of hierarchy and exclusion,the challenge now is to construct forms of power and politics that enable genuine belonging. That task, the speakers suggested, is not simply about reckoning with the past, but about deciding-consciously and collectively-what kind of global order will replace it.
