Exploring the historical antecedents to present day nationality and immigration restrictions in the UK, Sara Cosemans brings together burgeoning neoliberal ideology and nostalgia for empire in the 1960s and 1970s to explain how race and citizenship interacted. The politics of Enoch Powell, and his impact on policy, offer the ideal case study.
Histories of the Present
‘Very few actual children’: Defining Childhood and Assessing Age in the Aftermath of the Second World War
How does age shape the experience of refugeedom and migration? How have power structures used age, a supposedly objective measurement of worthiness and vulnerability, to grant some lives more legitimacy than others? Antoine Burgard explores.
Engaging with the ‘Un-Commemorated’ Past
What does it mean to engage students with difficult, traumatic, messy and complex histories of the British empire and the two world wars? How can we engage with the ‘un-commemorated’, whose names have not appeared on the memorial landscape? Anna Maguire and Diya Gupta reflect on their experiences teaching histories of the ‘un-commemorated’ in empire and war.
Radical Books: The Napier Report
How might a verbose Victorian Parliamentary Report provide a source of radical rural Scottish history? Andy Drummond explores the unlikely story of the 1884 Napier Report.
Syrian Voices: A New Community Oral History, Archival and Documentary Film Project
In this piece, Angela Flynn and Mehreen Saigol explore how an oral history project with Syrian refugees can offer a path to a more inclusive society. Prioritising the voices of the Syrian diaspora in the UK, the Syrian Voices project highlights the humanity and hopes of those who have experienced displacement.
The Forgotten Feminist History of the Universal Basic Income
Across the world people are raising their voices in support of a Universal Basic Income. In this piece, Toru Yamamori uncovers the forgotten feminist history behind this demand.
A Very British Scrapbooking Scandal
Cherish Watton considers what a scrapbooking scene in a recent BBC drama can tell us about the value of scrapbooks as radical sources for uncovering women’s lives.