Defining boundaries: European volunteer worker women in Britain and narratives of community

Women's History Review

Volumn 9, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 257-276

  Webster, Wendy ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL LANCASHIRE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0013063906     PISSN: 09612025     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09612020000200251     Document Type: Review

References (37)

1. Quoted in Steve Cohen (1985) Anti-Semitism, Immigration Controls and the Welfare State, Critical Social Policy, 13, pp. 73-92, p. 74.
2. An early text on the EVW scheme was by one of its administrators. See J. A. Tannahill (1958) European Volunteer Workers in Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
3. Recent literature includes Diana Kay & Robert Miles (1992) Refugees or Migrant Workers? European Volunteer Workers in Britain 1946-1951 (London: Routledge);
4. Kathleen Paul (1992) The Politics of Citizenship in Post-war Britain, Contemporary Record, 6, pp. 452-473;
5. Clive Harris (1993) Post-war Migration and the Industrial Reserve Army, in Winston James & Clive Harris (Eds) Inside Babylon: the Caribbean diaspora in Britain (London: Verso);
6. Kathleen Paul (1995) 'British Subjects' and 'British Stock': Labour's post-war imperialism, Journal of British Studies, 34, pp. 233-276;
7. Kathleen Paul (1997) Whitewashing Britain: race and citizenship in the postwar era (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press).
8. Linda Colley (1992) Britishness and Otherness: an argument, Journal of British Studies, 31, pp. 309-329.
9. Jan Pieterse (1992) White on Black: images of Africa and blacks in Western popular culture, p. 214 (New Haven: Yale University Press);
10. Anne McClintock (1995) Imperial Leather: race, gender and sexuality in the colonial contest (London: Routledge);
11. John Gabriel (1998) Whitewash: racialised politics and the media (London: Routledge);
12. See Laura Tabili (1994) We Ask for British Justice: black workers and the construction of racial difference in late imperial Britain (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
13. The Times, 10 February 1947.
14. Royal Commission on Population (1949) Report, paras 328, 342 (London: HMSO, Cmd. 7695).
15. Quoted in Kay & Miles, Refugees or Migrant Workers? p. 54.
16. Colin Holmes (1991) Historians and Immigration, in Colin Pooley & Ian Whyte (Eds) Migrants, Emigrants and Immigrants: a social history, p. 193 (London: Routledge);
17. Tony Kushner (1994) The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: a social and cultural history, p. 235 (Oxford: Blackwell);
18. Tony Kushner (1994) Immigration and 'Race Relations' in Postwar British Society, in Paul Johnson (Ed.) Twentieth Century Britain: economic, social and cultural change, pp. 420-421 (Harlow: Longman).
19. Tony Kushner (1998) Remembering to Forget: racism and anti-racism in postwar Britain, in Bryan Cheyette & Laura Marcus (Eds) Modernity, Culture and 'the Jew', p. 233 (Cambridge: Polity Press).
20. John Singleton (1991) Lancashire on the Scrapheap: the cotton industry 1945-1970, p. 64 (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
21. The phrase 'blacks next door' is used for a chapter title in Elspeth Huxley (1964) Back Street New Worlds: a look at immigrants in Britain (London: Chatto & Windus).
22. For the history of concerns about declining birth rates and the connections between imperialism and women's national role as mothers, see Anna Davin (1978) Imperialism and Motherhood, History Workshop, 5, pp. 9-66.
23. Quoted in Elizabeth Wilson (1977) Women and the Welfare State, p. 152 (London: Tavistock).
24. Quoted in Barbara Brookes (1988) Abortion in England 1900-1967, p. 134 (London: Croom Helm).
25. Quoted in Gabriel, Whitewash, p. 58.
26. Royal Commission on Population, para. 329.
27. Bill Schwarz (1996) Black Metropolis, White England, in Mica Nava & Alan O'Shea (Eds) Modern Times: reflections on a century of English modernity, p. 197 (London: Routledge).
28. The Times, 13 January 1948.
29. Yorkshire Post, 30 January 1948.
30. Quoted in Paul, 'The Politics of Citizenship', p. 460.
31. I have drawn here on 11 narratives from the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit (BHRU) by women who came to Britain as EVWs, 2 narratives in the Kirklees Sound Archive (KSA) by women who came as part of the Polish Resettlement Scheme after deportation to Siberia, and on my own interview with Genowefa Dziewanda, who came as an EVW. The interviews from the BHRU are: B0122 (Latvian), B0180 (Hungarian), B0100 (Polish) B0006, B0009, BOOM, B0020, B0027, B0036, B0043, B0046 (Ukrainian). The interviews from the KSA are 033PL, 330PL. There are also interviews with women who came to Britain following their mothers' recruitment as EVWs -BHRU, B0004 (Yugoslavian), B0060 (Latvian).
32. For discussion of narratives of deportation by Latvians following the Soviet occupations of 1940 and 1944, see Vieda Skultans (1997) The Expropriated Harvest narratives of deportation and collectivization in North East Latvia, History Workshop, 44, pp. 171-188;
33. Vieda Skultans (1998) Remembering Time and Place: a case study in Latvian narrative, Oral History, 26, pp. 55-63;
34. Vieda Skultans (1998) The Testimony of Lives: narrative and memory in post-Soviet Latvia (London: Routledge).
35. Genowefa Dziewanda, Oral testimony, 1996.
36. KSA 330PL. Later in her narrative the woman identifies this date as 10 February when, during the night of 10/11 February, there was the first wave of deportations from Poland to Siberia. See Z. S. Siemaszko (1991) The Mass Deportations of the Polish Population to the USSR, 1940-1941, in Keith Sword (Ed.) The Soviet Takeover of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1939-41 (London: Macmillan).
37. Genowefa Dziewanda, Oral testimony; BHRU, B0100.