Introductory description

Following an introductory overview of earlier migration movements to consider wider contexts, this 30 CATS undergraduate second-year option module examines the history of race, ethnicity, and migration in modern Britain. Beginning with the nineteenth-century migration of people fleeing poverty and the Great Famine in Ireland, it takes a roughly chronological approach by charting major events and debates, such as the 1919 race riots, various legislative measures designed both to limit immigration and improve ‘race relations’, anti-racism and the British Black Power movement, and ideas of ‘Britishness’ in multicultural Britain. Throughout, this module examines a wide range of key themes, particularly focussing upon the experiences of migrants, how immigration has influenced Britain and what it means to be British, and why immigrants from some countries appear to be more welcome than others.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction: Concepts and Historical Perspectives
Week 2: Nineteenth-Century Irish Migration
Week 3: Jewish Migrants from Eastern Europe
Week 4: ‘Undesirable Immigrants’: The Aliens Act 1905
Week 5: 1919: Riots, Racism, and Resistance in Imperial Britain
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: National Unity? British Identity in the ‘People’s War’
Week 8: Postwar Migration and the Empire Windrush
Week 9: The Empire Strikes Back: Commonwealth Migration
Week 10: The 1958 Nottingham and Notting Hill Racist Riots
Week 11: A Package Deal? Immigration Controls and Race Relations Acts
Week 12: ‘Rivers of Blood’: Enoch Powell and British Identity in the 1960s
Week 13: The National Front and Radical Right
Week 14: Anti-Racism, Asian Youth Movements and British Black Power
Week 15: Uprisings or ‘Sheer Criminality’? The 1980s ‘Riots’
Week 16: Reading week
Week 17: Stephen Lawrence and Institutionalised Racism
Week 18: Devolution: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England
Week 19: Islamophobia
Week 20: ‘Coming over Here, Taking our Jobs…’: The Media and Immigration
Week 21: ‘Black Lives Matter everywhere’: Transnational Resistance
Week 22: Concluding Session: ‘Britishness’ after Brexit?
Week 23: Revision

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a detailed knowledge of modern British race, ethnicity and migration history.
• Communicate ideas and findings, adapting to a range of situations, audiences and degrees of complexity.
• Generate ideas through the analysis of a broad range of primary source material for the study of modern British race, ethnicity and migration history.
• Act with limited supervision and direction within defined guidelines, accepting responsibility for achieving deadlines.
• Analyse and evaluate the contributions made by existing multidisciplinary scholarship.

Indicative reading list

Primary sources

• Englander, David, A Documentary history of Jewish immigrants in Britain, 1840-1920 (Leicester, 1994).
• Leese, Peter, Beata Piatek, and Izabela Curyllo-Klag (eds), The British Migrant Experience 1700-2000: An Anthology (London, 2002).
• Panayi, Panikos, The impact of immigration: a documentary history of the effects and experiences of immigrants in Britain since 1945 (Manchester, 1999).
• Modern Record Centre (Warwick), digitised documents relating to migration, policing, employment, community activism, etc.:
• https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/docs/race/
• http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/modules/docs/racism/
• The National Archives’ excellent online resource called ‘Moving Here’ – now unfortunately removed, but still accessible as archived web content:
• http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.movinghere.org.uk/
• Interviews conducted by the Birmingham Black Oral History Project:
• http://www.bbohp.org.uk/node/21
• Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s:
• http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/s/staying-power/
• British Pathé have lots of interviews/reports/etc.– for example, the collections at on ‘black Britain’ (http://www.britishpathe.com/workspaces/ewalston/black-britain) – but there is a lot of sources that you can find through searching their catalogue:
• http://britishpathe.com/
• Mass Observation Online has lots of material related to life in Britain, including ideas of national identity, race, etc.:
• http://www.massobservation.amdigital.co.uk/

Secondary Works

• Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin, Who Do We Think We Are? Imagining the New Britain (London, 2001).
• Aughey, Arthur, ‘Review Article: Questioning British Identity’, Journal of Contemporary History, 45:2 (2010), 478-86.
• Ansari, Humayun, ‘The Infidel Within’: Muslims in Britain since 1800 (London, 2004).
• Fryer, Peter, Staying Power: The History of Black People in Britain (London, 1984).
• Garrard, John, The English and Immigration 1880-1910 (London, 1971).
• Geddes, Andrew, The Politics of Immigration and Race (Manchester, 1996).
• Gilroy, Paul, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation (London, 1987).
• Hansen, Randall, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain: the Institutional Origins of a Multicultural Nation (Oxford, 2000).
• Hansen, Randall, Citizenship and Immigration in Post-war Britain (Oxford, 2000).
• Hiro, Dilip, Black British, White British (London, 1992).
• Holmes, Colin, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871-1971 (Basingstoke, 1988).
• Kushner, Tony, The Battle of Britishness: Migrant Journeys, 1685 to the Present (Manchester, 2014).
• Layton-Henry, Zig, The Politics of Immigration: Immigration, ‘Race’ and ‘Race’ Relations in Post-War Britain (Oxford, 1992).
• London, Louise, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933-1948: British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust (Cambridge, 2000).
• Miles, Robert and Annie Phizacklea (eds), White Man’s Country: Racism in British Politics (London, 1984).
• Panayi, Panikos, An Immigration History of Britain: Multicultural Racism since 1800 (New York, 2010).
• Paul, Kathleen, Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era (London, 1997).
• Phillips, Mike, and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: the Irresistible Rise of Multi-racial Britain (London, 1998).
• Ramdin, Ron, Reimaging Britain: Five Hundred Years of Black and Asian History (London, 1999).
• Solomos, John, Race and Racism in Britain (London, 1993).
• Spencer, Ian, British Immigration Policy since 1939: The Making of Multi-Racial Britain (London, 1997).
• Ward, Paul, Britishness since 1870 (London, 2004).
• Weight, Richard and Abigail Beach (eds), The Right to Belong: Citizenship and National Identity in Britain, 1930-1960 (London, 1998).
• Winder, Robert, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain (London, 2004).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.