Great Britain is a fundamental case study for the understanding of the problems generated by the international and European migration flows since the Second World War. Its imperial legacy, together with the construction of the welfare state, led to an important debate on the white rather than multiethnic characteristics of a nation between isolation, integration into the European Economic Community and the end of colonial possessions.
The course covers the period between 1945 and the Thatcher governments of the 1980s. The first lessons will cover the quantitative description of migratory flows in England, the origins of each migrant communities and places of settlement. Subsequently, the political and media debate on the issue of ethnic minorities coming to England after 1945, legislation to regulate flows and to combat the spread of racism (Race Relations Acts) will be addressed. The third part of the course will address the social and political organization of ethnic minorities between attempting to integrate into British society and preserving their own cultural peculiarities. The course will reach an end with the analysis of the clashes between black and Asian youth and the police forces between the seventies and eighties and the problem of ghettos (inner cities). These last aspects began to undermine the concept of multicultural nation spread by British culture and politics.

Compulsory bibliography:

1. Colin Holmes, John Bull’s Island. Immigration and British Society, 1871-1971, Routledge 2016 (only parts 3 and 4 – from p. 209 to p. 317).

2. Ian Sanjay Patel, We’re Here Because You Were There. Immigration and the End of Empire, Verso 2021 (only the introduction and Part 1 “We’re Here: Immigration and Empire” – from p. 1 to p. 94)

3. Nicole M. Jackson, ‘A nigger in the new England’: ‘Sus’, the Brixton riot, and citizenship, in “African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal”, v. 8, n. 2, 2015, pp. 158-170.