World War II led to both the greatest loss of human lives in any war as well as the greatest number of displaced people in both East and West Europe. With this combination of death and displacement leaving large numbers of their populations gone, countries like Britain, France, and Belgium had to figure out where their workforce for reviving their postwar, destroyed counties would come from. The International Refugee Organization (IRO) was one of the many international organizations to help figure out exactly how to help these people and these countries. The IRO focused specifically on displaced persons and which countries would most benefit from them. With a war partially caused by Hitler’s hatred of certain groups of people, and a war that caused massive amounts of global movement, there are certain to be major bumps along the way to recovery. In his book In Wars Wake, Gerard Cohen discusses the discriminatory processes and retention rates of people placed into Britain, France, and Belgium.
With a large percentage of their workforces gone, these countries were looking for young, able-bodied men to work in their factories, mines, and infrastructure projects. An IRO survey revealed that the refugees offered “tremendous value in aiding in the solution of manpower problems” (Cohen, 111). But of course, those parameters did not include everyone. This led to discriminatory practices and a lack of incentives for immigration, even though these countries were truly desperate for a large workforce. France held the worst selection percentage of right around a 50% rejection rate, due to the poor work opportunities offered to refugees and because they seemed to want to “hand pick” their immigrants on the basis of health, marital status, profession, to name a few criterion (Cohen, 107). Questionable grounds already for rejecting desperate displaces persons, these countries seemed to have social blinders on. There were many well educated, intellectual displaced persons who were looking for a home. It seems obvious, even if not intellectual or young, that a person can be a productive and contributing member of society.
After the issue of selection and immigration, these immigrants faced many problems assimilating to the culture and the citizens accepting them as one of their own, someone who was there to help the country out. Wendy Webster, historian and professor at the University of Huddersfield, wrote “There’ll Always Be an England,” discussing the racial differences caused by immigration from British Colonies into the mainland of Britain. “A key anxiety about black migrants in Britain concerned ‘miscegenation’-a notion that was highly gendered, focusing on fears that black men were stealing ‘our women’” writes Webster. A certain amount of uneasiness, even distasteful questioning, can be expected during the rocky times that the mid 1900s presented. This blurring of lines between the colonizer and the colonized created an unrest across the country, showing that maybe Britain was losing some of its power that it had lived with for centuries. But either way, the combination of racism and sexism that manifested itself in the non-acceptance of black men as immigrants from Britain’s colonies puts a bad taste in one’s mouth.
It is interesting how a seemingly humanitarian movement to return these immigrants and refugees back to their home of origin turned into a movement to place people where they were needed by the workforce of a country.
I really liked your post, and I think it’s interesting how countries in Europe used this crisis in a way to their benefit– by picking and choosing who would benefit their country the most. It’s also interesting how the intellectual people were turned away, and they only wanted people who could perform hard labor. This shows that they were really only looking for labor that didn’t really mean much to the country.