Labor and migration played a large role in helping reform national identities across Europe after World War II. During the war, nations rallied around the war effort, rendering national identities strong and unified. However, many countries found that their identities were not as strong without having the common enemy they found in the Nazis during the war. Countries such as England struggled to find a source of unity. However, they found the perfect solution in the displaced persons (DPs) and migrants from their colonies that overwhelmed Western Europe postwar. By emphasizing the differences between these people and the native inhabitants, Western Europe was able to reconstruct its identity in opposition to a new “other.”
In Chris Waters’ article “Dark Strangers” in Our Midst: Discourses of Race and Nation in Britain, he discusses how Britain’s sense of wartime identity crumbled after 1945 (p. 208). Britain believed that the only way to bring unity back was to “otherize” another group, as they had done with the Nazis during the war. By creating a “more exclusive concept of citizenship” and finding a more concrete way to define their own identity, the black migrants that arrived in Britain were constructed as the “dark stranger” (p. 215, p. 226). In Wendy Webster’s article “There’ll Always Be an England”: Representations of Colonial Wars and Immigration, she shows how the depiction of the migrant as a black man allowed the construction of “Englishness” as a white woman to come about more easily (p. 574). National identity emerged as the most important aspect to many English people, as this was the first time it was being professionally studied. (Waters, p. 213)
Despite many of the problems that the DPs and migrants brought to England with them, they almost served as a solution to a national British problem. The British were desperately seeking something to form and rally their identity around, or in this case, against. Even with decolonization, the English clung to their domestic order, which came to define what it meant to be English. Webster cites how the British had “nostalgia” for WWII, a devastating war that destroyed many parts of Europe (p. 573). The fact that they had nostalgia for this time reflects how important the formation of national identity was to the British, and how the migrants and DPs were the solution to their problems.
If this otherization can be described as immoral its doubtful it matters. After all drawing lines is an effective way to gain solidarity. At least it helped make so use with redefining what it meant to be British.
Christopher Jackson
I found it interesting that you focused on the effects the DPs had on the British identity because this wasn’t really something that I paid much attention to in the readings. However, you definitely present some interesting arguments. I’m curious though where you see the link between this newly defined identity and the issue of labor? In what ways did it shape the types of DPs that the British were willing to accept and the types of labor positions that they were trying to fill with these people?
I like how you tie that the DPs were a solution for the British. To this point, it seems like the DP problem has just created turmoil for everyone involved, whether it was the country or the DP, it seemed to be a rough time. Here Britain had to establish an identity and what better way to reestablish an identity than with people who are looking for a new start.