Oral History Interviews
One of the key outputs of our project is the collation of 60 oral history interviews.
30 of these interviews focus on the responses of Caribbean governments and their representatives to the legal restrictions imposed on immigration to the UK from the Caribbean from the early 1960s, and the plight of those members of the diaspora community, whose right to remain in the UK was challenged by the British state.
The other 30 interviews focus on members of the diaspora community, those who found themselves under threat of deportation or actually deported, and their supporters and legal and political representatives.
Below you can find a sample of some of these interviews. The core themes are helping us identify the extent to which members of the diaspora community were aware of changes to their rights and obligations brought about by successive acts of parliament from 1962, and the stages by which it became clear that significant numbers of people were having their right to remain in the UK challenged.
We are supplementing this oral history research with archival research in collections in the UK and the Caribbean and are in the process of digitizing these materials to ensure they are made available. We will continue to update this website as the project progresses.
