The Other Diasporas: Western and Southern European Migrants in Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London

Abstract

This article analyses the discourse surrounding diaspora in Charles Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in London, drawing upon the published volumes of that project and the unpublished notebooks used to record observations and interviews. It examines how Western and Southern European migrant groups in London were depicted in Charles Booth’s work at the turn of the twentieth century, comparing these depictions with those of the Irish Catholic and Jewish Diasporas. It focuses on four areas through which the concept of diaspora was interrogated in Life and Labour – through ideas of territory, economic roles, criminality, and the nature of transnational institutions. It will examine patterns of settlement, interactions with the host society, ideas of belonging, and why between 1890 and 1914 Western and Southern European diasporas failed to attract the attention or the opprobrium so apparent in the discourse on Irish and Jewish migrants.