Our member, Dr. Eithne Nightingale (UK), talks about her new book, Child Migrant Voices in Modern Britain: Oral Histories 1930s-Present Day (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Almost half the people displaced worldwide are children, yet their voices are rarely heard. This book records the experiences of children arriving in Britain from Hitler’s Europe in the 1930s to those escaping war in Ukraine in 2022. It follows the journeys of war-traumatised youth from Mogadishu to London's Mile End, and from Syria to a Scottish island. Some followed their parents to the ‘motherland’ from the former British Empire. Others came on their own to escape female genital mutilation, forced marriage or military conscription.
The stories show how Britain, both individually and collectively, has welcomed or shunned child migrants. Importantly, they link with contemporary issues such as the UK Home Office Windrush scandal where child migrants particularly from the Caribbean (named after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought West Indian migrants to the UK in 1948), were denied, as adults, their legal rights, wrongly detained or deported. Britain's Illegal Migration Act 2023 is a further manifestation of UK's hostile environment, denying rights to claim asylum by those who come to Britain by irregular means such as by small boats across the Channel, contravening international law.
Whilst the book draws on a range of academic disciplines it is the child migrant stories that drive this the book ensuring its broad appeal to families or communities with a history of migration, those working with, or studying the experiences of, child migrants or to people interested in powerful life stories.
As the Head of Equality and Diversity at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in 2003 I was asked to curate the World in the East End gallery at the V&A Museum of Childhood (now called Young V&A) in east London. For this I employed researchers from culturally diverse communities to collect oral histories and objects through their networks. The success of this initiative encouraged Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), with the V&A, to apply for three Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded PhD studentships on The Child in the World, one of which would build on The World in the East End but focus on first generation child migrants.
I leapt at the chance. The research seemed not only to provide a unique opportunity to draw on, and make sense of, my work experience but more importantly to engage with one of the most pressing challenges worldwide.
Alongside the research I co-produced, with former child migrants, a website and award-winning films on child migration. These have been relaunched to coincide with the book publication and related events with a range of partners. Such events have included readings and performances by contributors to the book with lived experience of child migration, film screenings and discussion. We also plan to produce podcasts on key issues in the book - family separation, childhood trauma through war and the Home Office's treatment of minors.
It is the child migrants’ stories, creativity and insights that drive this book as I guide the reader through the decades, interweaving the present with the past. It opens with Blanca and Necha from the Orthodox Jewish communities who, in 1938, arrived on the Kindertransport that brought 10,000 children to Britain. The subsequent six chapters feature children from countries that were once part of the British Empire; of Duncan, an Anglo-Indian, caught up in post-partition conflict, who only discovered he was brown after arrival in Britain in 1956 and who still fears, on hearing Farage[1] speak, that he may be sent back to Calcutta; of Argun, who rescued his photograph album from his grandfather’s bombed-out house in Cyprus in 1964, amused at what his grandchildren said they would rescue in such circumstances; of Roberta and Richard, who arrived in 1964 from Jamaica, as part of the Windrush generation some of whom have been denied their rights, detained and deported. In 1970 Maurice joined his parents in London, having survived bombs and hunger in the Biafra war. Only as an adult, through music and Rastafarianism, did he confront the trauma he experienced as a child. Between 1969 and 1973 six young people, who arrived pre- and post- the War of Liberation that led to the creation of Bangladesh, helped to defeat the fascist National Front spouting ‘Make Britain Great Again’, a cry adopted by right-wing governments and populists today. And lastly Zohra, who came from Pakistan in 1975, and who creates intricate modernist jewellery inspired by Islamic design that reflects her dual heritage. Most of these children’s parents came to the ‘motherland’ to study or work, sometimes invited by British employers or governments to meet labour shortages. Decisions to bring over their children were often influenced by civil war in the country of origin or, from the 1960s, increasing immigration controls that threatened family reunion.
The following chapters are mostly stories of flight; of Linh who escaped by boat from Vietnam with her father in 1979, found refuge in art and later studied to be an architect; of Henry, who escaped from El Salvador in 1981 where he was recruited into the army, became a self-taught singer, artist and campaigner for child refugees – he, like Maurice, had seen the impact of civil war on children; of Eylem, whose family as Kurdish Alevis faced discrimination in Turkey, who studied art in Brighton and set up a successful business. Linh, Zohra and Eylem, all talented creatives, went to university and defied their parents’ expectations by choosing partners outside their own community. Political conflict, in different parts of the world, drove others from their homes. Ahmed, originally from Somaliland, arrived in Britain via Djibouti in 2004; Bilqis arrived from Yemen in 2005; Nimo from Somaliland in 2009 and Said from war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia, in 2012, all regions that have experienced war and internal conflict for decades. Although most came with, or to join, at least one parent Ahmed found himself in the care of social services after his mother died soon after arrival – his father remained in Somalia. Said, on joining his father in Britain, had to leave his mother and three siblings in Mogadishu under threat from continual bombardment. Yosef, as a twelve-year old, left Eritrea where mandatory army conscription lasts for decades, travelling on his own across Africa and Europe before he arrived in 2011. Syrian children, having fled war, arrived from Lebanon on the Isle of Bute in 2015 as part of the government’s Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS). Mariia, aged thirteen, arrived in Horhsam in 2022 with her mother as part of the Homes for Ukraine programme. Mariam’s motivation to leave Guinea, as a sixteen-year-old in 2006, was for a more personal reason – to avoid forced marriage and female genital mutilation.
In the concluding chapter I reflect on the core themes that emerge from these testimonies; what they say about how welcoming to child migrants we really are as individuals and as a nation; whether this has changed over time and on the challenges ahead – the hostile environment, government policies, conflict across the world, and climate change. Acting as guide, I invite the reader to travel with me into the homes, schools and along the streets where children once played football or fought the fascists, threading together stories of loss and gain, of tragedy and joy.
The entire Introduction, and the chapter 'On Her Own', are both available to read here.
[1] Nigel Paul Farage is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) from 2006 to 2009 and from 2010 to 2016, as well as Leader of the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021.