Warm Beer, Cricket and Faith: English National Identity and Refugee Children in Britain, 1937–1945

Abstract

Evocations of English national identity during the 1930s and 1940s invoked an orderly, cohesive and gentle society where an essential “English decency” was maintained by the moderate Christianity of the people. While this elision of Christianity with national identity was mostly imaginary it was nonetheless influential This paper explores how this idea of Englishness served to marginalise two groups of Spanish and Jewish refugee children in England between 1937 and 1945. It documents how these children felt excluded from the national community and links these feelings to the types of cultural and educational capital that refugees brought with them into exile. The importance of this cultural capital in enabling Jewish children to adapt to life in England is further explored. In particular attention is given to the deployment of cultural capital in fostering multiple identities that reflected recent experiences of persecution, migration and exile.