HENK00004U English - Free topic 4: Migration Histories, Migration Stories: London and New York City

Immigrants, migrants, and refugees are part of the contemporary debate over nationalism, transnationalism, and globalization. The histories of London and New York interact and run in parallel for the past two centuries: both cities experienced massive population expansions, urban-industrial development and new metropolitan cultures; both cities attracted arrivals from across the globe. Among a multitude of others, these new settlers included Irish arrivals at the time of the potato famine in the 1840s, as well as eastern European Jews in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The British Nationality Act (1948) encouraged Caribbean settlement in the ‘motherland’; the U.S. McCarran-Walter Act (1952) made it more likely by forbidding settlement in the United States and, after the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1998, the Americans opened up immigrant visas to Chinese, while the British restricted the numbers who could resettle in the UK. This course surveys nationwide patterns and specifically interrogates the parallel histories of London and New York better to understand the nature of migrant urban experience.

The course is taught in two modules with Peter Leese teaching London during the first half of the semester and Russell Duncan teaching New York City in the second half.