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The ‘strangest of minorities’: The shifting visibility of South African post‐war migration to Britain
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The ‘strangest of minorities’: The shifting visibility of South African post‐war migration to Britain

M. Israel
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol.22(3), pp.479-493
1996
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Abstract

The debates about immigration to the UK, although couched in numerical terms, have generally been about the quality or ‘race’ of the immigrants. Research into race and racial relations has bought into this racialised discourse and has ignored migration from the Old Commonwealth. This has distorted our understanding on the effect of British immigration policies. The discourse has allowed South African migrants to be signified as non‐immigrants. In general, this has enabled them to evade the censures and the restrictions that have been targeted at would‐be and actual immigrants. Where this social invisibility has been thwarted, a strong political presence has allowed a resourceful, educated, informed group to evade immigration restrictions often with the connivance of British immigration bureaucracy.

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