This special issue of Les Cahiers du MIMMOC brings together a diverse range of contributions from young scholars affiliated with the MiDiB network (Migration and Diversity in the British and Irish Isles). Most of these papers were first presented as part of MiDiB’s activities, in particular our second doctoral student workshop, held at the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès in March 2023, and a workshop jointly held by MiDiB and CRECIB (Centre de Recherches et d’Études en Civilisation des Iles Britanniques) at the annual SAES conference, in June 2024, at the Université de Lorraine, Nancy. Together, these events extended our first doctoral student workshop, held at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in January 2022, whose results were published in the Observatoire de la Société Britannique (29, 2022). Through the lens of historical, political, and socio-cultural analysis, these articles offer fresh and complementary insights into the complexities of migration, identity and belonging in the UK and reveal the shifting dynamics that shape the lived experiences of migrant communities. Each contribution presents a distinct perspective; put together, they illustrate converging themes of exclusion, resistance, transnationalism and identity negotiation, reflecting the broad spectrum of research interests that characterise the MiDiB network.

This collection of articles is divided into two parts, each of which is reflective of one of the key themes that run through the MiDiB collective interest.

# The Politics of migration in the UK: politicisation, stigmatisation, marginalisation

This first strand is one that we would broadly characterise as the politics of immigration and diversity, by which we mean the study of these issues in the realm of British institutional, conventional politics. This covers our long-standing interest for the politicisation of immigration and diversity in political discourse: electoral campaigning, party politics, government policies in migration, asylum, citizenship, racial discrimination. It also touches on the study of British public policy in the fields of migration, asylum and citizenship. Within MiDiB, our attention often focuses on contemporary aspects, but we also strive to foster research on political history, at least in the 20th century. What the three articles gathered here under the heading “the politics of migration in the UK” show is the ever-increasing restrictiveness of British migration politics and policy.

This is why this issue opens with Samuel Malby’s study of historical evolution of immigration control and its long-lasting implications since the early 1900s. Samuel Malby’s study of British immigration detention from 1905 to 1970 retraces the legal and institutional developments that have normalised migrant detention, illustrating the historical continuities from the early 1900s – the 1905 Alien Act, passed in the context of the migration wave of Jews fleeing pogroms in the Russian Empire- all the way to 1970s policy debates on migration. By placing present-day immigration struggles within a broader historical context, this contribution reveals the deep-rooted structures that characterise migration governance in the UK and help us understand the historical-institutional framework that has underpinned the contemporary evolution towards illiberal trends in British asylum discourse and policy.

It is precisely an aspect of the highly restrictive aspects of contemporary British political discourse that Emilie de Witte documents in her article. De Witte chooses to focus her analysis on David Cameron’s rhetoric on diversity and multiculturalism, going back to 2005, when he was leader of the Conservative party before becoming Prime Minister in 2010. She shows how his discourse evolved towards an ever more restrictive, even arguably anti-immigrant discourse, that gradually came to frame immigration as a challenge to national cohesion. Cameron’s rhetoric built on the discourse of the “white backlash”, conflating immigration with multiculturalism to argue that immigrants and minorities benefited from “state multiculturalism” at the expense of “British” populations. This is the discourse that underpinned a long political sequence that started when Cameron gained power in 2010 and continued throughout the 2010s, leading to “hostile environment policy” and the Windrush scandal, and eventually contributing to the victory of the “leave” camp in the 2016 Referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union.

Through her examination of the ‘CSI justice campaign’, and through shedding light on the bureaucratic hurdles and the emotional distress experienced by EU citizens post-Brexit, owing to the precarious nature of residence rights, Marie Perrière helpfully complements Malby’s and De Witte’s work. While her research deals with the reaction of citizens of EU countries to post-Brexit arrangements, it resonates with both articles because it highlights the harshness of the Conservative government’s handling of the EU residents in the UK during the country’s exit of the EU. In order to obtain settled status, EU residents were oddly required to have Comprehensive Sickness Insurance (CSI), a requirement that was neither indicated clearly by the Home Office nor advertised in the media. The situation understandably led to much anxiety among EU residents and resulted in the CSI justice campaign. This episode illustrates the fact that restrictive policies and political discourses on asylum, extra-European immigration and multiculturalism can eventually lead to situations in which EU citizens, i.e. predominantly “white” and largely European-born populations, come to bear the overflow of racialised and xenophobic immigration policy into the transition to post-Brexit Britain.

Also central to this issue are the complexities of diasporic identities and transnational connections, reflecting MiDiB’s engagement with the lived realities of migrant communities.

# The lived experiences of transnational populations: beyond conventional understandings of minority identities

Sonia Awan’s focus on Pakistani communities is of particular importance here, given the numerical and cultural significance of Pakistanis who in many case have been established for a long time in the United Kingdom. Her comparative approach with the Pakistanis of France helps create new insights into the singularity of the British Pakistani experience, with their French counterparts serving as a meaningful control case – Pakistani migration to France being of course a much more limited phenomenon, and one where the post-colonial dimension of migration is absent, as is the case of similarly small Pakistani populations in other West-European countries. In particular, Awan addresses here two issues that are central to the study of the Pakistani diaspora, and on which there is still a dearth of research. The first one is the question of “return” migration, examined here through the tribulations of ageing Pakistani women, which enables Awan to disentangle the intricate intersection of gender, economic constraints and ageing in shaping individual choices to return or not. This leads Awan to explore a second trope in the study of transnational, diasporic communities, that of the notion of ‘homeland’. She shows that, while her sample of ageing Pakistani women in Britain and France often view Pakistan as the “homeland”, only relatively few actually make the decision to move there, and most often for very specific reasons related to healthcare or lifestyle choices, rather than an illusionary longing for national or cultural “origins”.

The question of transnational diasporic identities is further explored by Andrew Milne’s article on the singular case of the Sikhs in the United Kingdom- also a key population in today’s diverse British society. Milne takes a radically novel approach to the study of Sikhs in the UK, insisting on the Sikhs of Britain’s particular mode of belonging, which transcends conventional approaches to transnationalism, identity and citizenship. According to Milne, Sikhs have not only traditionally been a minority in India, but are also characterised by a high level of dispersion across the world, being present in 47 countries. Since the 17th century, and all throughout the colonial and post-colonial ages, Sikhism has displayed essential “building blocks” of what can be viewed as a “exclusive identity”, and Sikhs consistently display a desire to maintain a “cohesive identity” and to “ensure the continuity” of Sikhism. Thus, the Sikh diaspora is an original case of a transnational, diasporic community in the British and post-British world, that challenges usual notions of nationhood.

Helena Francis’s work on Malaysian migrants in the UK brings yet another dimension to the study of transnational communities in the UK. Contrary to Pakistanis and Sikhs, Malaysians in the UK, while also hailing from a former British colony, are not part of the post-World War II post-colonial migration. Rather, they are the product of the more recent large migration wave that can be approximately dated back to the 1990s and 2000s, and that have seen an expansion of the number of sending countries, contributing to making the UK – and London in particular – a particularly diverse society, at least in the European context, leading to the popularity of Steven Vertovec’s concept of “super-diversity”, coined precisely to describe London in the 2000s. Francis’s work shows how the place of Malaysians in British society is a matter of constant negotiation and renegotiation between a drive to “fit in” and a persistent longing for Malaysia, expressed through an attachment to cultural rites and events – serving as an example for many other populations from relatively “recent” migration waves.

Finally, this issue closes with Quôc-Dung Dang’s study of the practice of neoliberal multiculturalism in the urban management of London’s Chinatown. This multi-layered study offers several additional insights into the study of transnational, diasporic identities developed in the three preceding articles. First, it reminds us that transnationalism, and more broadly discussions of the identities and citizenship of migrant minority populations, can often be helpfully framed as studies not just of ethnicity, culture or race, but also as localised ethnic, cultural or racial modes of belonging – in this case, urban modes of ethnic belonging. In Dang’s work on the Westminster “Chinatown” in London, it appears clearly that the construction of “Chinese” or more broadly “Asian” identity is intimately linked to a specific urban space, leading to the notion of Chinatown. In this, Dang’s article serves as an invitation for future research on other types of ethnic enclaves in British urban spaces, such as “Banglatown” in East London, the “Curry Belt” in Birmingham, or other Chinatowns in Britain, such as Manchester’s. Yet, beyond the urban sociology of ethnicity, Dang’s main contribution here is to reveal the powerful role played by economic interests in the construction of ethnically-labelled neighbourhoods. In Westminster, a culture of public-private partnership is instrumental in promoting the “Chinese” image of Chinatown. This serves to illustrate the impact of market-driven agendas on the persistence of multiculturalist tropes in local policy-making and in projecting understandings of global cities such as London as inherently multicultural, despite the anti-multiculturalist political discourses analysed in the first section of this issue.

By engaging with themes that span policy, history, identity and urban space, this special issue encapsulates the essence of MiDiB’s intellectual répertoire. In addition to deepening our understanding of migration and belonging in the UK, this volume challenges the dominant narratives that have shaped public and political discourse in the UK — and beyond — in recent years. In doing so, it offers a critical perspective on the contemporary politics of inclusion and exclusion, reasserting the relevance of interdisciplinary scholarship in the study of migration and diversity, as promoted by MiDiB since its launch.