Conversation
The history of movement
david.olusoga@gmail.com
Abstract
Emerging from the British Academy’s Summer Showcase of 2024, this Conversation between two distinguished commentators explores the history of movement, of immigration and of emigration. It addresses the matrix of assumptions around race, identity, public policy, immigration, imagination and myth-making which feed into the understandings, and misunderstandings, of the history of Britain and of Empire. A particular focus is on the ways in which both immigration and emigration were subject to the differential and shifting application of values, hierarchies, rights and historical myopia in a complex of racial identity, politics and legal definition. While these processes can be historically defined, in Windrush, in Enoch Powell and in Second World War commemorations for instance, their challenging presence still resonates in contemporary Britain. This article arises from an ‘In Conversation’ event which occurred on 12 July 2024, as part of the British Academy’s annual Summer Showcase.
Keywords
British historyEmpireraceidentityimmigrationemigrationCopyright statement
© The author(s) 2025. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Olusoga, D. with Shah, R. (2025), ‘The History of Movement’, Journal of the British Academy, 13(1): a15 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/013.a15crossref
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