Family, love, marriage and migration: the push and pull of private life

This chapter explores ways in which the dynamics of love, marriage and family have shaped experiences and stories voiced by modern migrants. It focuses on the darker and brighter sides of migration and private life, where twin influences of migration and emotionally driven events are difficult to disentangle. These cases provide stark evidence of how modern migration became more discretionary, facilitating decisions to change countries for love – or for loss of love. Even the darker stories suggest migration could provide relief from the pain of family breakdown and divorce possibly due to resilience born of the challenges of adaptation to new countries. Transnational child custody cases and the complications of transnational marriages add further dimensions of complexity. Stories of close-knit but fractured families across three countries, with complex emotional histories, reveal equally complex understandings of the idea of ‘home’ as sanctuary, which owes something to changing attitudes to mobility. The final section, ‘Making the heart grow fonder: transnational love stories’, explores two women’s accounts in which emotions drove transnational love stories in striking ways, one over nearly half a century. All the stories mark a new trend of discretionary migration in an age of affluence.

Changing faces of modern migration

This chapter uses some striking migrant stories from ‘new faces’ of modern migration to scrutinise the underlying theme of change and continuity in modern migration history. The stories range across return migration, the heightened place of Europe in British migration practice, women’s turn to life-writing to make sense of their mobile experiences, the phenomenon and role of British goods shops in migrant destinations, and a British-Indian professional woman’s ambivalent responses to her further migration history. They illustrate the impact of migrant experience on shifting patterns of identity, global, national and local, on the diminishing hold of ‘associational’ culture among the British, on the changing profiles of migrant women who navigated their strategic management of career, marriage and family, and on the interplay of race and gender in migrant lives. All these themes illustrate deep changes which characterised the migrant experience of the modern British diaspora, but alongside enduring continuities.

Introduction: the modern drive to emigrate

The introduction canvasses key themes to emerge from migrant testimony: traditional sojourning and adventure migration, the casual adoption of global mobility and global identities from the 1960s, the conjuncture of geographical mobility with occupational and marital and family mobility, and the continuing importance of traditional ties of family alongside changes in migration practices and attitudes. An underlying theme is the complex interplay of change and continuity in migration history. It explores the social and economic contexts in Britain and beyond which set the stage for dramatic changes in migration practices like serial migration in and between developed countries. It argues the case for exploration of modern mobility through the experience of the British ‘diaspora’, and the value of oral testimony and life histories for exploring migrants’ mentalities at a time of heightened individualism and focus on personal desires. It stresses the importance of gender during a time of transformational social change and points to the impact of social mobility, in the population and among migrants, at a time when receiving countries were tightening visa qualifications.

Migration and career stories: work in an age of mobility

This chapter drills down more deeply into the role of work and career at a time when changing motivations, like adventure and lifestyle, were beginning to dominate the migration landscape. Material improvement remained central to modern migrant motivations, but it was mediated by new elements and subjected to changing contexts of employment in a globalising world. In these ways career stories underline the centrality of change alongside continuity in migration history. Skilled migrant stories point to changes in opportunities and ambitions beyond more traditional ‘job for life’ expectations, and explore the role of trade union pathways to career advancement. The expansion of tertiary education from the 1960s spawned a growing body of upwardly mobile middle-class job hunters for whom migration offered unique opportunities of geographical and social mobility. For some professionals this translated into the stellar success they thought was closed to them in Britain, illustrated by examples in medicine, journalism and Information Technology. Exploration of the traditionally mobile career of academic employment illustrates ways in which old patterns of academic mobility intensified under new conditions. Here career drove mobility, but with surprising developments, including career change combined with return migration.

Migration, cosmopolitanism and ‘global citizenship’ from the 1990s

This chapter concludes the chronological section by examining testimony of migrants from the 1990s, pointing to intensification of cosmopolitan mentalities and motivations like lifestyle enhancement. It focuses in some depth on stories of two generations of women through the separate but connected mobilities of mother and daughter, both global in outlook but deeply loyal to adopted localities. Noting that scholarship on globalisation has done little to relate the macro trends to mentalities of ordinary people, it suggests that modern migrant story-telling might shed light on how the globalising world has impacted upon wider populations as well as migrants themselves. It scrutinizes politically motivated mobility, particularly inspired by hostility to British politics and class, involving both expatriate employment, transnational marriage and serial migration; this is juxtaposed against family migration and travel seemingly devoid of political motivations but imbued with a virtual lifetime of adventure motivations. The chapter concludes with a case of a woman’s serial migration from Britain to Europe to South Africa to Australia, highlighting experiences of the ‘trailing spouse’ of an expatriate husband, of their later migration, and the impact of frequent mobility on marriage and family as well as on shifting identities.

Thatcher’s refugees and Thatcher’s beneficiaries: discretionary migration in the 1980s

This chapter scrutinises the paradox in the 1980s of the coexistence of flourishing discretionary migrations of affluence with deep recession and unemployment accompanying Thatcher government reforms. Some migrants labeled themselves ‘Thatcher’s refugees’, describing flight from austerity while pursuing new opportunities for self-improvement and mobility overseas. There was also a surge in migration of ‘professional and managerial’ classes, often attracted to inner-city living or to rural or coastal locations with emphasis on lifestyle changes and ecological values. Thatcher’s refugees coexisted with Thatcher’s beneficiaries, supporters who attributed success in Britain to government policies, and seized initiatives in new fields like Information Technology, easily adapted to global mobility. ‘Migration on a whim’ draws on stories illustrating the powerful emergence of casually adopted mobility in pursuit of ideological or political interests, global adventure and personal quests for transformations in lifestyle, love and spirituality. These could be effected successfully by tertiary educated migrants easily able to adapt their qualifications to demands of new countries and to satisfy restrictive visa qualifications. Their ease of mobility also translated readily into more cosmopolitan outlooks, skeptical of national loyalties and adopting ‘citizen of the world’ identities, attitudes that would deepen in the 1990s.

Postwar pioneers of modern mobility: the 1940s to the 1960s

This chapter examines features of the first generation of postwar British emigrants which foreshadowed the later rise of modern global mobility. The drive of Anglophone immigrant countries to attract skilled employees, coinciding with the spread of higher education and social mobility in Britain, opened the way for aspiring migrants to use migration as a means to social advancement and entrepreneurship. Continuing global mobility, once the preserve of elites, was becoming democratised, and young travellers seized on the facilities to pioneer new forms of serial migration. At the same time the shadow of the British Empire continued to exert its influence on potential migrants with backgrounds in the military and imperial administration. Some faced the threat of downward social mobility, but, comfortable with global transience, turned to continuing migration as a means of comfortable survival. ‘Nomad daughters of the Empire’ describes women’s adaptation to new forms of mobility, and ‘the empire of the imagination’ explores ways in which the power of the ‘colonial dividend’ worked to stimulate thoughts of ‘wanderlust’ and serial migration, setting powerful precedents for the next generation of mobile Britons.

The quest for new lifestyles: migration, treechange and grey nomads

This chapter canvasses the turn to ‘lifestyle’ goals in migration, in ‘escape stories’, in drives to realise ecological principles and anti-urban ideology and in quests for a ‘purer’ way of life often driven by enhanced modern expressions of individualism. It begins with two examples of ‘island stories’, on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, and on Dangar Island in New South Wales. Both exemplify ‘escape’ themes alongside ecological pursuits, close-knit community living and local identities. ‘Tree-change’ stories’ denote similar lifestyle passions, one shaping a lifetime pursuit for Nordic landscapes, finally settling in New Zealand. Others establish connections between lifestyle goals and ‘new age’ aspirations, settling in locations associated with alternative lifestyles like Byron Bay in New South Wales. Cosmopolitan identities co-existed with continuing mobility, a strong sense of place and high valuation on belonging to ‘the land’. ‘Grey nomad’ touring marked the ultimate extension of serial migration, with a nomadic couple’s account of passions for global mobility and lifestyle pursuits into retirement years, recalling former migration while continuing permanent itinerancy in the mobile home, earning a living on the road without fixed address.

The decline of British privilege: migrants of the 1970s

This chapter explores key moments in the 1970s when migrant practice illustrates the transition from a migration of austerity to one of affluence, when couples and singles contemplated working holidays, seeking adventure and lifestyle change alongside material success, part of a revolution of rising expectations. But new migrants faced new challenges, some racial, stemming from rising levels of non-white immigration in Britain and receiving countries. New visa restrictions ended British privileged access to old Commonwealth countries, while there was a greater presence of British migrants of colour, who initially left former colonies, like India, then re-emigrated, potentially experiencing heightened discrimination. They were mostly deeply traditional in adhering to conventional family values, while unsettling conventional British migrant profiles. But, reflecting rising divorce rates in western countries, migrant testimony indicates the association of migration with marital and family stress and breakdown, alongside deep commitment to traditional family values. These values were tested further through the rise of serial expatriate work, in countries like Saudi Arabia, a potential spur to subsequent more stable family migration. The stories point to the 1970s as a period of transition in British migration history, in which patterns of change and continuity coexisted.