This book is concentrating on responses post-World War 2. However, it is important to note the obvious – that immigration (and emigration) are not new phenomena:

Indeed, there are dangers in assuming otherwise: as the Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage found, assuming that migration has been solely a post-World War 2 phenomenon gives a distorted picture of the makeup of the UK, and ‘… diminish[es] the long-term presence of Africans and Asians in the country.’ (The Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage, 2005, 65)

However, since World War 2, immigration has taken on a new focus. Much has been written elsewhere about the historical, legislative and social approaches to migration, as well as the large number of legislative changes made in recent years (see for example Girvan, 2018) and their impact on different aspects of UK society and the welcome for new arrivals (Calò et al., 2021). As just one example, the enormous volume of legislation and policy changes since 2007 was highlighted during debates on the Immigration Bill in 2015:

Immigration and the UK – and has there always been a welcome?

Here we will look at this background very briefly.

1940s–1950s

Firstly, there is something of a rose-tinted view of the welcome that the UK offered in the past (especially in relation to refugees arriving during and just after World War 2). It is salutary to remember, for example, that the government refused Jewish immigration at the start of World War 2; that ‘After giving safe harbour to thousands of people fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe, the British government decided that some of them could be a threat – and locked all of them up.’ (Parkin, 2022)