This book takes the postwar Caribbean migration movement to Britain and explores it from a new, history of emotions orientated approach. Elevating emotion and felt experience to a well-known historical narrative, it enriches our understanding of this defining moment in modern British history, which irrevocably altered the nation''s demographic makeup, cultural fabric and conception of national identity. Reconstructing migrant experience, asking what it felt to be there and how these feelings, individual and collective, influenced the sequence of historical events, this book interrogates what it meant to be part of the postwar Caribbean migration movement. From the emotions that drove them to migrate, to the disillusionment they felt upon arrival, to the solutions they formulated when confronted with fear, hostility and violence, migration is an inescapably emotional phenomenon, and this particular episode is no exception. An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain grapples with these messy entanglements in a systemic way to understand the cultural worlds from where these migrants came, the emotional worlds of postwar British society, and how they navigated through them.

Autorentext
Ryan Tristram-Walmsley is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Swansea University, UK. Supervised by Rob Boddice, he received his PhD in 2023 with distinction from the University of Kent, UK and Universidade de Porto, as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Early-Career Researcher.

Klappentext

A groundbreaking exploration of postwar Caribbean migration to Britain, Oceans of Feelingoffers the first historical analysis of this defining moment in modern British history using the tools, methods, and theories of the history of emotions. Decoding the emotional experiences and expressions of Windrush-era Caribbean migrants, this book reconstructs the migrant experience by asking not just what happened, but how it felt - individually and collectively - and how these feelings shaped and configured the course of historical events. Taking cues from spatial studies, the history of the senses, and the history of the body, Ryan Walmsley charts a rich and affectively meaningful course through the experiential content of the migrant condition in a specific historical moment. From the emotional bonds of the 'Mother Country' ideology to the unique affective-sensory atmospheres of transatlantic liners bound for Britain, Oceans of Feeling reveals exciting new dimensions to Windrush-era migration which have been masked under the canopies of social and political approaches. A reflection of the history of emotions' power to revivify historical narratives, this book interrogates the emotional causes and consequences of racist violence. In doing so, it reframes racism as a cluster of specific emotional concepts and expressions, which provides fascinating insights into the lives of Caribbean migrants in this period. This includes linking the disproportionate designation of Caribbean children as 'educationally subnormal' in British schools to a constellation of emotional stereotypes and experiences. It also explores private spaces, such as dub and reggae house parties, which migrants constructed as emotional refuge from the hostile atmosphere of public spaces, and demonstrates how love and sex were politicised in the increasingly racialised atmosphere of postwar Britain.

Inhalt

Introduction: What have you done with our dreams?

1. Migrant emotivations
2. Departures, journeys, arrivals
3. Romance, family, childhood
4. Hatred, violence, fear
5. Balms to the aching souls: Migrant parties as Emotional Refuge
   Epilogue: The ghosts of Windrush past