The first history of London to show how immigrants have built, shaped and made a great success of the capital city London is now a global financial and multicultural hub in which over three hundred languages are spoken. But the history of London has always been a history of immigration. Panikos Panayi explores the rich and vibrant story of London- from its founding two millennia ago by Roman invaders, to Jewish and German immigrants in the Victorian period, to the Windrush generation invited from Caribbean countries in the twentieth century. Panayi shows how migration has been fundamental to London's economic, social, political and cultural development. Migrant City sheds light on the various ways in which newcomers have shaped London life, acting as cheap labour, contributing to the success of its financial sector, its curry houses, and its football clubs. London's economy has long been driven by migrants, from earlier continental financiers and more recent European Union citizens. Without immigration, fueled by globalization, Panayi argues, London would not have become the world city it is today.

Britain has largely been in denial of its migrant past - it is often suggested that the arrivals after 1945 represent a new phenomenon and not the continuation of a much longer and deeper trend. There is also an assumption that Britain is a tolerant country towards minorities that distinguishes itself from the rest of Europe and beyond. The historian who was the first and most important to challenge this dominant view is Colin Holmes, who, from the early 1970s onwards, provided a framework for a different interpretation based on extensive research. This challenge came not only through his own work but also that of a 'new school' of students who studied under him and the creation of the journal Immigrants and Minorities in 1982. This volume not only celebrates this remarkable achievement, but also explores the state of migrant historiography (including responses to migrants) in the twenty-first century.

Some two decades since the publication of London the Promised Land?, which charted and investigated the successes and failures of the migrant experience in London over a period of three hundred years, this book re-examines the migrant landscape in London. While remaining a beacon for immigrants, the migrant face of the city has changed rapidly and dramatically from one which was heavily populated by semi-skilled and unskilled post-colonial incomers, to one which now embraces the EU Accession Countries, refugees from the Middle East and Africa, oligarchs from Russia, the new wealthy from China, economic migrants from Latin America and Ireland, and still, post-colonial immigrants - at the same time witnessing the exodus ’home’ of incomers, or their descendants, who now see opportunities where there were none before. The contributors, all leading academics and practitioners in their diverse fields, examine changes to the migrant landscape of contemporary London at the micro, meso and macro levels. London the Promised Land Revisited thus explores a range of experiences in the capital, including the presence and treatment of illness amongst migrants, the phenomenon of migrant ’invisibility’ and asylum, the migrant marketplace and ethnic ’clustering’, and interaction with local and national government - across a variety of migrant groups, both ’new’ and ’old’. As such, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interest in migration, migrant experiences and the contemporary ’global’ city.

This book focuses on the nature and extent of social change, integration and identity transformation within the Jewish community of Britain during the interwar years. It probes the notion – widely articulated by Jewish communal leaders at this time – that the immigrant second generation (i.e. British and foreign-born children of Russian and Eastern European Jews who migrated to Britain in the late Victorian era up to the First World War) had ‘estranged’ themselves from their Jewishness, Jewish elders and peers and were fast assimilating into the British mainstream.The volume analyses the second generation’s developing outlooks and behavioural trends in a variety of environments, effectively charting the changes and continuities present therein. As a whole, the book sheds light on the varied ways in which this group developed new identities that both drew from and reflected their Jewish and British heritage.

In the early Victorian age, the streets of East London were home to migrants from different regions and religions. In the midst of this area lay the famous Rag Fair street market, sustained by trade routes stretching across the globe. The market’s history demonstrates that it was not only a place of economic exchange, but also an intercultural contact zone where Jewish and Irish migrants mingled, entered client relationships and forged political alliances. Reconstructing the varied (partly multiethnic) group-building processes operating in the market, Rag Fair draws on approaches across migration history, economic history, economic anthropology and the sociology of political movements to uncover the social mechanisms at work in the old clothing trade.

This book explores the transnational practices of migrant groups in global London, illustrating the complex relations between migrants and the city in the context of globalisation. The chapters offer a starting point to examine migrants and the city from a comparative perspective by bringing together case studies of diverse migrant communities. They use ‘languaging’ as the central concept in the development of an interdisciplinary framework that creates an opportunity to ‘talk across disciplines’ to engage with key issues crisscrossing migration, cities and language. The book promotes ‘language-based’ or ‘language-sensitive’ research, drawing on the plurilingual repertoires and the language and translanguaging practices of migrant communities as the tool for data collection and ethnographic fieldwork. This approach generates fresh insights into the complex issues of diasporic identities, belonging and place-making, which have broad implications for migration studies in post-Brexit Britain and beyond.

An East End Legacy is a memorial volume for William J Fishman, whose seminal works on the East End of London in the late nineteenth century have served as a vital starting point for much of the later work on the various complex web of relations in that quarter of the capital. A variety of leading scholars utilise the insight of Fishman’s work to present a wide range of insights into the historical characters and events of the East End. The book’s themes include local politics; anti-alienism, anti-Semitism and war; and culture and society. In pursuing these topics, the volume examines in great depth the social, political, religious and cultural changes that have taken place in the area over the past 120 years, many of which remain both significant and relevant. In addition, it illustrates East London’s links with other parts of the world including Europe and America and those territories "beyond the oceans." This book will prove valuable reading for researchers and readers interested in Victorian and twentieth century British history, politics and culture.

This book answers the question why London has been a stronghold for the Labour Party for relatively long periods of the last century and continues to be so to this day to an extent that surprises contemporaries. The book draws on evidence from history and political sociology as well as the personal experience of the author in London local government during the 1980s. It argues that while changes in the London economy, plus the ability of the party to forge cross-class alliances, can go some way to explain the success of the Labour Party in London, a range of other demographic and social factors need to be taken into account, especially after the year 2000. These include the size of London’s growing black and ethnic minority communities; higher concentrations of well-educated younger people with socially liberal values; the increasing support of the middle-classes; the impact of austerity after 2008; and the degree of poverty in London compared to non-metropolitan areas. This book will be of key interest to readers interested in the history of the Labour Party, the politics of London, Socialist politics/history, British politics/history, government, political sociology, and urban studies.

Noncitizens have always been present in liberal political philosophy. Often hard to situate within traditional frameworks that prioritise citizenship, noncitizens can appear voiceless and rightsless, which has implications for efforts towards global justice and justice in migration. This book proposes an alternative. Noncitizenism identifies an analytical category of noncitizenship. While maintaining the importance of citizenship, noncitizenship is another form of special individual-State relationship. It operates far from a State, at its borders, and within its territory, providing a tool for examining the continuity between sites of engagement and the literatures, questions, and conclusions relating to them. The book argues that an accurate liberal theoretical framework, and one which can address contemporary challenges, must acknowledge the political relationship of noncitizenship between individuals and States. This book is for students and scholars of political philosophy and for those interested in noncitizenship and how it can inform the response of liberal theory, citizenship, global justice, migration studies, political theory and policy work.

My generation in Eastern Europe was caught in the middle of two revolutions (1944 and 1989), which instead of moving history ahead pushed it backward. We thus at first made a U-turn-a tortuous one, to be sure-from underdeveloped capitalism to underdeveloped socialism, but because socialism and underdevelopment are strange bedfellows,we have since discovered we were on the wrong path and are trying now to return to where we started. The drama of that generation is what this book is about.