Windrush, Shame and Scandal: Race, Class, Gender, and Immigration in a British Context
Windrush, Shame and Scandal: Race, Class, Gender, and Immigration in a British Context “I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers”.i This paper explores the issues of race, class and gender at the epicenter of British immigration policy, with particular reference to the lived experiences and reality of the Caribbean “Windrush generation” an estimated 500,000 – 700,000 people in the UK, who arrived from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1971 and their descendants.ii This entails exploring the socio-historical context of the migration of the ”Windrush” Caribbean people to Britain and the experiences of themselves and their descendants in British society. Of necessity, we also review the history of immigration patterns control in the UK. This is a critical exercise in view of the current “Windrush crisis” occasioned by the discriminatory implementation and abuse of Immigration law to deport and disadvantage many of the Windrush generation and their descendants.iii In our review parallel streams or race, class and gender are seen to turbulently converge in the everyday lived experiences of Black people in Britain, giving rise to fractures and fault lines in the fabric and landscape of British society. It is crucial that we begin our review and place this crisis in a socio-legal historical context to ensure analytical veracity. In this regard, it is important to consider that the internecine European tribal conflict, known as “World War
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