The Unsettling of Europe
The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE LAURA SHANNON PRIZE 2021
SHORTLISTED FOR THE LIONEL GELBER PRIZE 2020
A TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019
Migrants have stood at the heart of modern Europe's experience, whether trying to escape danger, to find a better life or as a result of deliberate policy, whether moving from the countryside to the city, or between countries, or from outside the continent altogether.
Peter Gatrell's powerful new book is the first to bring these stories together into one place. He creates a compelling narrative bracketed by two nightmarish periods: the great convulsions following the fall of the Third Reich and the mass attempts in the 2010s by migrants to cross the Mediterranean into Europe.
The Unsettling of Europe is a new history of the continent, charting the ever-changing arguments about the desirability or otherwise of migrants and their central role in Europe's post-1945 prosperity. Gatrell is as fascinating on the giant movements of millions (such as the epic waves of German migration) to that of much smaller groups, such as the Karelians, Armenians, Moluccans or Ugandan Asians. Above all he has written a book that makes the reader deeply aware of the many extraordinary journeys taken by countless individuals in pursuit of work, safety and dignity, all the time.
This is a landmark book on a subject that, decade by decade, will always haunt Europe.
'Peter Gatrell has produced a tour de force ... This important and timely work on one of the most challenging issues in modern Europe deserves to be widely read' Ian Kershaw
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Far from a disruptor of equilibrium, mass migration has been a constant, constructive, but bitterly controversial aspect of postwar Europe, according to this sweeping historical study. University of Manchester economic historian Gatrell (The Making of the Modern Refugee) surveys 75 years of population upheavals, including the forced expulsions of millions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe following WWII; the return of colonists from the British, French, and Portuguese empires in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s; the movements of people from eastern and southern Europe into western and northern Europe after the fall of communism and the expansion of the European Union; and the contemporary appeals for acceptance of refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East and Africa. Gatrell probes the conflicted politics of migration: governments and businesses eagerly recruit migrant workers, he writes, only to cold-shoulder them during economic downturns, and native-born citizens sometimes welcome but often attack migrants because of cultural and racial xenophobia stoked by right-wing nationalist parties. Gatrell's detailed but lucid and accessible treatment balances close analysis of shifting policies with vivid, sympathetic sketches of migrants negotiating perilous border crossings and struggling to fit in. The result is a persuasive challenge to conventional wisdom that shows migration in Europe is nothing new.