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Migration, and Migratory Myths 13
odically these schemes were prohibited but they tended to continue illegally,
so that large numbers of ‘illegals’ were and are routinely employed in lowpaid
work in agriculture and services; one estimate is that in the 1990s there
were 10 million ‘illegal’ workers in the United States. Both Canada and
Australia had programmes of large-scale immigration after 1945. In both
countries non-Europeans (and at first even southern Europeans) were systematically
discriminated against, until the 1960s when Canada changed
its criteria to allow immigration of non-Europeans and Australia formally
abolished its White Australia policy. There has also been migration within
the Third World in search of work. The biggest has been migration to work
in the oil-producing states of the Middle East, at first from other countries in
the region and then, after 1973 and the increase in the price of oil, from the
Indian subcontinent as well. The new workers were mainly on temporary
contracts, and had none of the rights of native inhabitants. They formed from
53 per cent to 80 per cent of the workforce in some of the oil-producing
states. In addition, workers migrated from less successful economies to faster
growing ones within Latin America, South-east Asia and Africa.
MIGRATION TO BRITAIN
Britain, like other countries, is the product of immigration from many
different places, and was far from being a homogeneous ‘white’ nation even
before the twentieth century. A poem in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1909, quoted
by Robin Cohen in The Frontiers of Identity, puts it thus:
The Paleolithic, Stone and Bronze Age races
The Celt, the Roman, Teutons not a few
Diverse in dialects and hair and faces –
The Fleming, Dutchman, Huguenot and Jew
’Tis hard to prove by means authoritative
Which is the alien and which the native.
Migrants to Britain came first as hunters, then as cultivators in search of
land, as conquerors, as refugees fleeing persecution, as workers in industries
and public services. The first humans are said to have reached Britain during
the Ice Age, before the sea cut it off from the continent of Europe, but Britain
was not continuously inhabited until about 15,000 years ago, when the
climate improved and vegetation and animals could survive. In AD 43, the
Romans invaded Britain; their soldiers and administrators were followed by
tradespeople and others from Italy and elsewhere in Europe. The Romans
were followed by Saxon, Viking and Norman invaders. The Anglo-Saxons
were mainly farming people, who came for cultivable land. By the early
600s, London became a trading centre for people from many parts of Europe.
From the 800s there were large Danish invasions and settlements, followed