Friday, January 8, 2010: 2:50 PM
Edward B (Hyatt)
Finding a Place in the Post-Imperial City:
Return Migration from the Settler Empire to London and Liverpool, 1960s-1980s
Ellen Boucher
Recent scholarly interest in the history of transnational migration has highlighted how the political and cultural shifts of decolonization triggered mass movements of peoples in and across the British Empire. As colonies became nations and empire became Commonwealth, thousands of men, women, and children crossed oceans and continents in search of work, family, and asylum. Many migrants returned “home” to the metropole, creating social enclaves in British cities, and infusing metropolitan culture with new tastes, art forms, and accents. While historians have focused considerable attention on the creation of Caribbean, South Asian, and African diasporas in British cities, the reintegration of white colonials from the settler empire remains understudied. This paper follows the return migration to London and Liverpool of white colonials from two settler regions, Australia and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), in order compare the distinct ways that these migrants forged social ties and claimed cultural space in a post-imperial world. Based on oral history interviews with former child migrants – men and women who, as children in the 1920s through 1950s, had been selected for permanent emigration to the dominions in an effort to fill the settler empire with British “stock” – this paper argues that returning to the United Kingdom as adults often provoked a deep questioning of migrants’ national and racial identities. Many confronted the painful fact that their conceptions of “Britishness” and deeply held beliefs about racial difference no longer fit the mainstream, metropolitan culture. While these feelings of exclusion led some migrants to renegotiate their imperial ideals, others found refuge by creating close-knit settler communities in particular districts. The spaces of the post-imperial city thus both challenged and offered a means to reaffirm white colonials’ racialized, imperial worldviews.
Return Migration from the Settler Empire to London and Liverpool, 1960s-1980s
Ellen Boucher
Recent scholarly interest in the history of transnational migration has highlighted how the political and cultural shifts of decolonization triggered mass movements of peoples in and across the British Empire. As colonies became nations and empire became Commonwealth, thousands of men, women, and children crossed oceans and continents in search of work, family, and asylum. Many migrants returned “home” to the metropole, creating social enclaves in British cities, and infusing metropolitan culture with new tastes, art forms, and accents. While historians have focused considerable attention on the creation of Caribbean, South Asian, and African diasporas in British cities, the reintegration of white colonials from the settler empire remains understudied. This paper follows the return migration to London and Liverpool of white colonials from two settler regions, Australia and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), in order compare the distinct ways that these migrants forged social ties and claimed cultural space in a post-imperial world. Based on oral history interviews with former child migrants – men and women who, as children in the 1920s through 1950s, had been selected for permanent emigration to the dominions in an effort to fill the settler empire with British “stock” – this paper argues that returning to the United Kingdom as adults often provoked a deep questioning of migrants’ national and racial identities. Many confronted the painful fact that their conceptions of “Britishness” and deeply held beliefs about racial difference no longer fit the mainstream, metropolitan culture. While these feelings of exclusion led some migrants to renegotiate their imperial ideals, others found refuge by creating close-knit settler communities in particular districts. The spaces of the post-imperial city thus both challenged and offered a means to reaffirm white colonials’ racialized, imperial worldviews.