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Eleni Liarou, Moving Lives: Narratives of Nation and Migration among Europeans in Post-War Britain. By Kathy Burrell. Histories and Memories: Migrants and Their History in Britain. Edited by Kathy Burrell and Panikos Panayi., Twentieth Century British History, Volume 18, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 270–273, https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwl037
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Kathy Burrell's Moving Lives and the collection of essays in Histories and Memories edited by herself and Panikos Panayi are two of the most concise responses to the latter's remark a few years earlier that ‘there is enormous scope for historians to use oral history for the study of immigrants in post-war Britain’ (Panayi, The Impact of immigration: a documentary history of the effects and experiences of immigrants in Britain since 1945, 1999, p. 32). Both books employ oral history methods to understand migrant experiences as the processes of both emigration and immigration, incorporated in narratives and memories of ‘home’, national identities and belonging.
Based on interviews she conducted with Polish, Italian and Greek–Cypriot migrant populations in Leicester, Burrell's analysis in Moving Lives is structured around her respondents’ narratives of migration, of their national identities, transnational networks and community life. Through these four themes, emphasis is placed on the migrants as active agents in the migration process, as well as on their national and individual perceptions, which are shown to be conducive to the sustenance of their lives in a foreign land. As Burrell rightly argues, this approach contributes to the field of migration studies in two significant ways. On the one hand, it breaks away from the dominant academic paradigm which focuses on issues of racism, or immigrants’ integration to the ‘host’ society, and often views immigrant populations as collective unities, primarily defined against their ‘hosts’ (apt here is the abbreviated analytical model of ‘the host’ versus ‘the other’ that has been amply and uncritically used to make crude generalizations and rigid categorizations). On the other hand, the focus on individual experiences of migrants who followed different migratory routes—Polish, Italian, Greek–Cypriot—questions the unidimensional approaches to economic and forced migration, unravelling a range of motivations and influences that do not easily fit into such catch-all labels. The first chapter offers a rigorous analysis of these issues, especially with regard to the experiences of Italian and Greek–Cypriot migrants in Britain. Their narratives reveal the complexities involved in migration decision-making. In contrast to the use of the linear and descriptive theoretical models of ‘chain migration’ and ‘push/pull factors’, these narratives are conceptualized as part of social ‘networks’ of family, friendship and community, shedding light on often neglected aspects of gender, age, geographic origin and the differentiations within them.
