Introduction

Summary

What happens when we insert refugees into a history of twentieth-century Britain? As we might expect, exploring the entry, reception and resettlement of refugees reveals a good deal about British attitudes towards vulnerable strangers, belonging and identity. Yet the book argues for the value of using the arrival of refugees to consider a far wider set of historical problems. Focussing on refugees’ relationship with British society and institutions allows us to historicise, not only the changing experiences of refugees themselves but how Britain also changed over time. Assumptions that refugees fleeing Nazism were solely the responsibility of voluntary organisations, as much as the expectation that 20,000 Hungarians within a few short weeks in the winter of 1956-1957 would be found employment, or that Ugandan Asian arrivals in 1972 might need protection from the National Front, all speak volumes about profound shifts in British society across the twentieth century. Unpicking the historical processes underpinning these assumptions leads us, for example, to think about the changing nature of the welfare state, the relationship between voluntary organisations and government, the role of pressure group politics and the relationship between national employment levels and the reception of foreigners.