Refugees In Britain Research Articles

Research Round-Up

In this issue’s Research Round-up we follow on from the last issue’s theme of ‘race’ and racism. We begin with a piece from Tracey Warren and Nadia Joanne Britton on the importance of incorporating income and asset levels when addressing ethnic economic disadvantage. We then look at community care in relation to black and minority ethnic carers before moving on to a report on disabled refugees in Britain. The next two reports consider particular groups: asylum seekers and refugees, and young Turkish-speaking people. Our focus then leaves issues relating to ethnicity and we have details on two new research reports from the Department for Work and Pensions, the first on Working Families’ Tax Credit and the second on experiences of ONE. The final piece from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a review of in-work support in light of government plans to create two new tax credits: Integrated Child Credit and the Employment Tax Credit.

Accessing Homosexuality: Truth, Evidence and the Legal Practices for Determining Refugee Status - The Case of Ioan Vraciu

This article focuses on the events surrounding a homosexual Romanian man's attempt to be recognized as a refugee in Britain. Numerous themes emerge such as the nature of authenticity, knowledge, identity, pleasure, evidence and the homosexual refugee as being caught in between two legal apparatuses (that is, fleeing from the hostility of one legal regime and then trying to gain refugee status, and thus legal protection, via a British Immigration Tribunal). In this article, the corporeality and sensuality of legal practices are exposed in the form of `practices of truth'. That is, in this case medico-legal `living individuals' were to perceive, hear, speak, touch and penetrate the `secrets' of Mr Vraciu's body in order to authenticate his sexual identity for the purposes of law. This case also demonstrates the existence of a differend between what I describe as the self-knowledge of homosexuality and the `legal' fact-based, or authorized knowledge of homosexual identity produced through practices of truth.

Local heroes: Belgian refugees in Britain during the first world war

The Belgians during the First World War represented the largest refugee movement in British history. Despite the size of this influx — at its peak some 250,000 were present in Britain ‐ there has been an almost total absence of reference to them. This article suggests that this neglect is unfortunate both with regard to our understanding of the First World War and the history of refugees during the twentieth century. In particular, this article stresses the importance of local responses and reactions to the refugees and the significance of place in the process of rebuilding lives and identities in Britain.

Willy Sternfeld and exile studies in Great Britain

The mass migration from German‐speaking lands after 1933 has led to huge research projects, but the fate of the refugees in Britain has for long been neglected. The focus in this article on Wilhelm Sternfeld reveals that his career was exemplary. As a German refugee escaping to London, like so many others, by way of Prague, he became involved in many of the London refugee organizations. After 1945 he helped produce the first bio‐bibliography of exile literature. Exile Studies have been slow to start in Britain, but now Sternfeld's example is being followed at the London Research Centre for Exile Studies.

‘Be true to your culture’: Gender tensions among Somali Muslims in Britain

This article explores the manner by which Somali Muslim women in London's East End negotiate their gender, ethnic and religious identities along paths which are meaningful to their way of life as economic migrants or refugees in Britain, and which at times may lead to tensions between the sexes. Such negotiation largely refutes the image of passive Muslim women confined to the role of mere spectators, rather than playing an active part in defining patterns of female adaptive behaviour deemed appropriate to the situational context of life in Britain.

Beyond the pale? British reactions to Nazi anti‐Semitism, 1933–39

The reactions of the British people to the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Europe have received scant attention. The little that has been written has stressed the sympathy generated by the atrocities at the cost of disguising the complexity of the responses that emerged before 1939. In contrast this article suggests that anti‐Semitism of a liberal and conservative variety helped to shape reactions in Britain. Moreover it argues that liberal attitudes towards Jews determined both refugee policy and the treatment of refugees in Britain and ultimately caused government and public alike to misinterpret the full horror and significance of the holocaust.

The employment of Ugandan Asian refugees in Britain, Canada, and India*

The employment of Ugandan Asian refugees in Britain, Canada, and India*

Vietnamese refugees in Britain: Resettlement experiences

(1983). Vietnamese refugees in Britain: Resettlement experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 454-463.

Correction: Indo-Chinese refugees in Britain

Correction: Indo-Chinese refugees in Britain

Refugees in Great Britain

POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PLANNING (P E P) in a recent broadsheet (No. 216, January 14, 1944) gives a useful review of the present position of refugees in Britain and of the changes which have taken place during the War and since the appearance of Sir J. H. Simpson's report "The Refugee Problem" in 1939. The present number of civilian refugees is estimated at 139,430, including 50,000 Germans and Austrians, and 20,000 Allied seamen, a total which differs from that of the Prime Minister's statement of April 7, 1943, in allowing for those who have left or died since the beginning of the War. Considerable progress has been made in utilizing the services of aliens with special professional, technical or academic experience. According to the Minister of Labour's statement of September 23, 1943, shortly after the 1941 registration 82·5 per cent of the men and 60 per cent of the women were in employment, and since 1941 the opportunities open to aliens to engage in war-work have increased, so that the number who now remain unemployed is negligible.