Book Review: Internationalists in European History. Rethinking the Twentieth Century by David Brydan and Jessica Reinisch (eds)

Abstract

quent case studies about a particular community that illuminate the theme of a given chapter. The book opens with a dizzying mapping of migrant communities in London and its suburbs, outlining early settlements and their development as migrants climbed social ladders and followed the city’s urban development, moving into new areas. In some cases, as with the Jewish community in Golders Green, some areas only really developed through the settling of migrants (p. 47). The following chapters focus on migrants and labour: they stress the often-exploitative conditions of low-paid employment that migrants faced and still face, the gendering of employment, and how skilled migrants have, throughout history, fallen back on unskilled and semi-skilled jobs because of racism. Panayi also examines the high rate of self-employment and entrepreneurship among migrant communities (p. 87) as well as elite migrants. While doing so he keeps his reader aware of the social and economic heterogeneity that characterizes migrant communities, as well as the legal restrictions they face in moving to and obtaining work in Britain. Migrant City carefully examines the varied relationships of love, hatred, and friendship between migrants and white Britons; a significant corrective to some studies that consider migrant communities in a hermetic way. Later chapters stress how migrants have shaped London, from religion to food, through to entertainment. Panayi’s superb study demonstrates how migrants have been crucial in the flourishing of skills, labour, and knowledge that have made London a cosmopolitan city.