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.
Why, since Brexit, have working class people in Britain come to be thought of as not just white but also male? Laura Schwartz suggests to understand this, we must look at history.
Research is emotional. Five history researchers reflect on how new guidelines on wellbeing have shaped their practice in productive and radical ways
What do colonial histories of movement across the ocean tell us about present day proposals to send asylum seekers to offshore sites? Lucy Mayblin, Joe Turner, Arshad Iskajee and Thom Davies explore this history of maritime measures, as part of the Moving People feature.
The NHS has long relied on immigrant personnel, and restrictions to migration have an impact on its staffing. In the third piece for the Moving People feature, Anna Caceres writes about the fallacy of the ‘good’ migrant narrative.
Following the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s apology for the non-commemoration of Black and Asian soldiers in the First World War, John Siblon explores how and why their memory was deliberately hidden by Britain.
How should historians respond to acts of violence in the official archive? Catherine Phipps considers the life of Samia, an Algerian-French teenager, arguing that the epistemic attacks she faced highlight the urgency of historical work which takes account of police violence against sex workers.
