Blog

The poetry of migration

One of the first events we held in the course of our three-week residency at Londonewcastle this summer (where more than 4,000 people visited our exhibition Call Me By My Name: Stories from Calais and Beyond) was the ‘Poetry of Migration’ on Tuesday 6 June. Michael Rosen (distinguished poet, writer, entertainer – and distinguished friend… Read more

Exploring the migrant history of Victorian East London

What was the attitude of the Victorians to immigration, particularly Jewish immigration? What was the mood of the country leading up to the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905? And what parallels are there between the experience of immigrants then and now, one hundred years later? The focus of this guest blog is Israel Zangwill and… Read more

Human Cargo

One of our core ambitions has always been to tell the long story of migration into and out of this country – partly because every immigrant into one country is an emigrant from another, and partly because people forget that, until the 1970s, the United Kingdom was a net exporter of people: more people left the… Read more

Brexit Ground Zero

One of the more unpleasant effects of the referendum result has been a spike in anti-immigrant activity, with abuse hurled at Poles in the street and graffiti daubed on cultural centres run for and by EU migrants. This change in atmosphere, allied to the uncertainty of their future status in a UK divorced from the EU, has led… Read more