Leicester Peace Talks: Public lecture on post-WW2 migration experiences

A public lecture at the University of Leicester on 6 November will explore how Government policies around immigration from the Caribbean have affected individuals.

The recent terrible trauma faced by some of the children of the ‘Windrush generation’, who were unlawfully stripped of their UK citizenship, is frequently attributed to the ‘hostile environment’ introduced by the current government over the past 10 years.

Some Caribbean migrants were impacted, often profoundly, by these policies. Dr Margaret Byron will argue that it is important to locate their experiences of the current policy regime within the extended, pervasive culture of discrimination and racism which has influenced policy towards colonial immigration since 1945.

Dr Byron is Lecturer in Human Geography in the University’s School of Geography, Geology and the Environment. She is the author of The Unfinished Cycle: Post War Migration from the Caribbean to Britain and co-author of Migration in Comparative Perspective: Caribbean Communities in Britain and France.

Professor Katja Ziegler, Director of the University’s Centre for European Law and Internationalisation (CELI) said: “We are absolutely thrilled to be able to host such an expert on Carribean immigration as Dr Byron in our Peace Talks. The treatment of the Windrush generation is a topic of concern for British society at large and potentially has wider ramifications.”

The talk, which is free and open to all, has been organised by CELI as part of its Peace Talks series, a forum for debate of pressing legal, political and social issues which are of concern to society as a whole, such as this year’s theme of migration. It will be held in the Fielding Johnson Building on the University of Leicester campus on Wednesday 6 November, starting at 4.30pm (refreshments served from 4.15pm). Free places can be booked via Eventbrite.