British identity seems somewhat strange and elusive. What is “Britishness”? Can “Britishness” includes all identities of people living inside-, not only identities of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh, but ones of other people who have British nationality, Caribbean, Chinese and Indian etc. or is it something different from a simple mixture of these various identities? One of the reasons why the British identity is so elusive can be attributed to its history. The problem of how a country has dealt with immigration is one of useful indicators of how its national identity has been constructed or changed, because we can know who we are only by recognizing who we are not, and Britain is not the exception. Even considering the period since 20th century when the national identity had more significant meaning than before, the legal change on British nationality and immigration law shows how drastically the boundary of belonging to Britain has been fluctuated according to the change occurred within a century. It would be needless to say the British affiliation with EC and the enlargement of EU towards Eastern Europe also blurred the boundary of Britain.
This workshop will aim to consider the historical relationship between immigration to Britain and the national identity in Britain. While, as some studies point out, the problem of “race” which closely connected with imperial past, has some significant meaning in defining “Britishness”, particularly in postwar era, other historical factors, for example, the change in relation with Europe, also contributed to construct British identity. Taking an example of Britain, this workshop will consider how the historical context affects national identity of the time and the way immigrants, or aliens were treated.

Organizer: Hiromi Mizokami, a fellow of International Training Program for Young Scholars (The Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan), St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford