Chapter 10: ‘I’m a citizen of the world’: late twentieth-century British emigration and global identities - the end of the ‘British World’?

Abstract

British emigration has undergone significant changes since the heyday of the immediate post-war emigration schemes to Commonwealth countries of settlement. 'British Diaspora' is used to describe the outflow of British citizens, notwithstanding some of the persuasive reservations about its applicability which have been advanced cogently by Stephen Constantine. British migrants adopt the varieties of global and European identities with varying degrees of enthusiasm. As early as the 1950s the eager young British sojourners who seized the new, usually assisted, migration opportunities to embark on long-term working holidays around the world were as often women as men. Indeed, many female occupations, such as nursing, physiotherapy, clerical work and hairdressing, were uniquely mobile and in high demand. The brief portrait sketches of young women migrants since the 1980s illustrate some of the ways in which Europe has become inter-twined with the migrant mentality.