Imperial Investments
Springer International Publishing (Verlag)
978-3-031-80343-7 (ISBN)
- Noch nicht erschienen - erscheint am 13.05.2025
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This book examines the legacy of a British child migration scheme that relocated British children to Southern Rhodesia between 1946 and 1962, with the aim of populating the colony with "fresh white stock". The selected children were resettled at Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College, a boarding school established in a disused RAF airbase outside the town of Bulawayo. This social engineering project sought to "rescue" children from what were predicted as undesirable futures in Britain and offer them a "better life" with prospects of social advancement. Yet, beyond individual salvation, the scheme emigrated the children with the intention that they would help sustain the racially segregated colonial order.
Building on long-term ethnographic research with former Rhodesian child migrants, now living in the UK, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, the book delves into their unique experiences of migration, displacement, and resettlement. It reflects on the lasting impacts of this state-sponsored "philanthropy," exploring how former migrants interpret, reconcile with, or reject the scheme's ambitions. It considers how they understand their past and navigate the disruptions, silences, and uncertainties that mark it. By highlighting these enduring emotional, social, and political repercussions, the book critically addresses how colonial histories matter in the present. Through the lens of former child migrants-whose kin relations were ruptured, who were disciplined into silence and suppression, and who have seen scant public recognition of their past-the book sheds light on the formation of memory through its gaps and silences. It contributes to understanding the complexities of memory in contexts of forced migration and displaced communities.
Katja Uusihakala is a University Researcher in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki in Finland. She is interested in themes related to politics and practices of memory in (post) colonial migrant or displaced communities: in how people imagine, address and attempt to reconcile with pasts, how the past effects and matters in the present, how it is (selectively) memorialized, commemorated and narrated, and how, on the other hand it is also silenced, erased and forcibly forgotten. In her recent projects, she has been interested in the politics and temporalities of reconciliation. She has examined the partial scopes and silences of postcolonial apology, with a specific focus on child migration to late colonial Southern Rhodesia. Her previous research explored colonial and post-colonial white settler communities of mainly British background, analyzing their identity politics and social memory practices in Eastern and Southern Africa.
1. Introduction: "We have been written out of history".- 2. Imperial Investments: Outlining and Launching the Child Migration Scheme.- Interlude: Out to Africa.- 3. "Little Britain in the bush": Growing Up at the Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College.- 4. "Dear Mummy! I am well and happy": Thickening and Thinning of Child Migrant Kinship through Time.- 5. Reconciliation and Selective Silences in a Postcolonial Apology to British Child Migrants.- 6. Remembering Community.- 7. Conclusion.
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 13.5.2025 |
|---|---|
| Reihe/Serie | Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies |
| Zusatzinfo | Approx. 300 p. 25 illus. |
| Verlagsort | Cham |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 148 x 210 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeines / Lexika |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte | |
| Schlagworte | Anthropology • Boarding School • British child migration • Childhood • Child migration history • Child welfare • Colonial Africa • colonial order • Fairbridge Memorial College • Imperial social projects • kinship • Memory • migration history • Oral History • Postcolonial apology • Race • Rhodesia • Settler Colonialism • Social advancement • welfare history |
| ISBN-10 | 3-031-80343-4 / 3031803434 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-3-031-80343-7 / 9783031803437 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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