Project Brief: 

We examine how the complex history of migration, governance and asylum has produced the cause and conditions for an increasingly diverse and ‘global’ Coventry in the post-war decades. What kind of actors have enabled such a convergence? What diasporic formations around race, ethnicity and religion have this produced? Our work, mainly collaborative in nature, will feed into histories of migration, mobility and diaspora in Britain focusing on non-white immigrant communities.

This project will identify different immigrant populations – workers , students, refugees – and their presence in the city. It brings together historians, sociologists and community-based activists to reflect on immigrant identification and belonging in Coventry.

Project Leads:

Prof. Anne Gerritsen, Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick

Dr Somak Biswas, Honorary Research Fellow, Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick

Research Assistants:

Dr Matteo Mazzamurro, Aarhus University, Denmark
Dr Sabera Bhayat, Associate Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Warwick

Collaborative Partners:

Coventry Asylum and Refugee Action Group

Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre

Queer Asia, UK

Foleshill Road, 1970s Coventry.
Courtesy: Modern Records Centre

______________________________

Funded by:

Global History and Culture Centre

City of Culture, Coventry

Institute of Historical Research, London