Identities and perceptions : gender, generation and ethnicity in the Italian Quarter, Birmingham, c1891-1938
The study of immigrant communities in Britain has been among the most recent topics to be researched since the radical changes in historical interests and methodology in the late 1960s. However, embarking on a research project such as this, which examines social and economic aspects of Italians who lived in Birmingham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has emphasised the extent of neglect of the whole subject of the history of European immigration in Britain. The exclusion of these people from Britain! s history is not the consequence of lack of opportunity, for numerous social and economic histories have been written in which European immigrants might have been included. Yet few historians- have chosen to do so. Instead, the ethnic population and its contributions to the development of Britain have been only fleetingly acknowledged. Their marginalisation from British mainstream history is difficult to understand, yet it could be justified on the grounds that the ethnic community is, and has always been, a comparatively small proportion of Britain' s total population. Even so, if this is the reason it becomes difficult to square with the violent and passionate reactions their presence
Volante, Carol
Italians in Britain; Community
Identities and perceptions : gender, generation and ethnicity in the Italian Quarter, Birmingham, c1891-1938. The study of immigrant communities in Britain has been among the most recent topics to be researched since the radical changes in historical interests and methodology in the late 1960s. However, embarking on a research project such as this, which examines social and economic aspects of Italians who lived in Birmingham during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has emphasised the extent of neglect of the whole subject of the history of European immigration in Britain. The exclusion of these people from Britain! s history is not the consequence of lack of opportunity, for numerous social and economic histories have been written in which European immigrants might have been included. Yet few historians- have chosen to do so. Instead, the ethnic population and its contributions to the development of Britain have been only fleetingly acknowledged. Their marginalisation from British mainstream history is difficult to understand, yet it could be justified on the grounds that the ethnic community is, and has always been, a comparatively small proportion of Britain' s total population. Even so, if this is the reason it becomes difficult to square with the violent and passionate reactions their presence
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