Kids with pram wheels

Boys playing with discarded pram wheels, 1988.

Winning the argument or listening?

The festive season is upon us. According to experts commenting on the subject in magazines and newspapers, it could equally be called the arguing season. A friend in an early Christmas party bemoaned the arrival of her in-laws, bringing with them different opinions on Brexit and other political issues that, sooner or later, led to uncomfortably heated confrontations.

And just two days ago, what started as a really interesting discussion in our house – on why so many men failed to recognise that rape and wolf-whistling were on the same continuum, on the way in which power relationships skewed jokes and banter, on whether it was ever acceptable to use racial identity to comic effect – morphed into one of those confrontational exchanges from which at times it feels there’s no coming back.

© Scott and Borgman

And it got me thinking, in an end-of-year valedictory fashion, why it was that discussions, arguments and debates these days so quickly became polarised, and the position taken by the opposing individuals so firmly entrenched. (And is it just ‘these days’? Was it always like this?) What starts out as an exchange of views transmutes into an exchange of fire, and people’s positions end up ludicrously exaggerated – as Hella Eckardt’s recent blog illustrated, in relation to Roman Britain. People at either end of the spectrum insist on the absolute truth of their position with a strident vehemence that doesn’t represent the reality – which is that all of us, bar the most extreme fanatics, recognise the possibility of alternative positions even when firmly convinced of our own. But rather than examine the evidence, listen to whether the other speaker brings something new to the debate that might cause us to reconsider, it suddenly seems more important at any cost to win this argument, to prove that our position is right and the other’s wrong.

Is this failure to discuss and the associated need to win spawned by the structure of our institutions? The adversarial position is hard-wired into our legal system, for example, and also into Parliament (at least, certainly the House of Commons); it used to, and may still, be at the heart of university research and debate; and it’s of course the basis of all sporting activity. It’s clearly not unique to the UK (the US displays it in spades) but is it uniquely Anglo-Saxon, or European, or Western? Are there countries and cultures where winning an argument is less important than hearing what everyone has to say?

These questions lie at the heart of what we are attempting with the Migration Museum. If our concern was to win the argument (whatever that might be) or show other people the error of their ways, we would, rightly, be doomed to failure and unworthy of support. But what we are wanting to do is to create a space where people can debate issues of paramount importance without automatically taking up tired and predictable positions and seeing who can shout the loudest. Our strapline – all our stories – was chosen to reflect both the fact that if you scratch the surface of anyone’s family history in Britain, you will find a migration story, but also, crucially, the recognition that everyone has a say in this matter and all have a right to be listened to, even if some might find their views unacceptable.

It’s not a new year’s resolution, because it’s been the nub of what we’ve been doing since the beginning, but listening and allowing the spectrum of opinions to be heard without it all descending into the weary Twitterati scrimmage of rancour and animosity – that’s what we’ll continue to do in 2018. With Brexit, Trump and other factors casting their divisive, polarising shadow, it seems more important than ever. So, if you’re raising a glass over this festive period, here’s to listening, not fighting.

To all our readers and followers, have a really good break over the festive period, and see you again in the New Year.

Economic migrants or refugees? A core issue at the heart of migration past and present

The Migration Museum Project is blessed with a large team of fantastic volunteers, without whom we would find it hard to function and impossible to run our events and exhibitions. Assunta Nicolini is one such volunteer, and her discussions with visitors to our current exhibition, No Turning Back, have got her thinking about a number of issues that she feels are raised by the display. This blog is the result of her thoughts and discussions around two of the seven moments of the exhibition: the arrival in this country of Huguenot refugees after 1685, and the passing of the Aliens Act in 1905.

No Turning Back: Seven migration moments that changed Britain introduces visitors to powerful artworks and archive images carefully interwoven to create a narrative that brings together past and present. It is within history that we so often find the key to understanding many of the social realities we inhabit today.

Migration is no exception. One of the seven moments shown in the exhibition, the year 1685, holds a particular relevance in the understanding of today’s migration dynamics.It was the year that France made Protestantism illegal, precipitating the arrival in Britain of about 50,000 French Protestant Huguenots. Centuries before the drafting of the Refugee Convention (1951), and with no legal framework in place establishing roles and responsibilities towards people escaping persecution, the term ‘refugee’ was introduced into the English language through the French Huguenots arriving on British soil in search of protection (refuge). It took about three centuries, a series of major humanitarian crises and, ultimately, the horror of the Holocaust for the international community to establish a legal framework aimed at giving protection to people fleeing persecution.

Article 1 of the United Nations’ 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The history of the Huguenots in Britain is not, however, just about one of the largest refugee groups to seek safety and protection in this country. Their life experiences were not simply defined by their ‘refugee-ness’; on the contrary, their arrival and settlement offer just as important insights into the realities of migration.

In the exhibition, Adam Dant’s delightful map representing this historical moment takes the curious eye of the visitor through a detailed drawing of the streets surrounding East London’s Spitalfields Market. Surnames of French origin are circled to indicate where the Huguenots were to be found. As visitors adjust their eye to these several locations, they then notice a further, more crucial detail. Surnames are accompanied by ‘professions’, mainly artisanal, such as weavers, clockmakers and silk merchants.

A detail from Adam Dant’s ‘Huguenots in Spitalfields’. A range of professions are readable in these circles, for example: ‘silk weaver’, ‘undertaker’, ‘victuailler’, ‘reed maker’ and ‘gent’. © Adam Dant

Such detail is crucial as it allows the visitor to expand their understanding of who these people were, beyond the one-dimensionality of their  ‘refugee-ness’. Being given protection in Britain was not the end of the Huguenots’ ‘migration journey’ – settling and restarting their lives, as well as providing for their families, was just as important. Historical archives tell us that, although the Huguenots left France clandestinely and at short notice, taking little with them and with limited time for planning ahead, they were nevertheless aware that certain destinations were better than others. London, for example, offered not only protection but also great opportunities for employment and hence a better place to settle.

You don’t need to be an expert to spot the striking similarities with contemporary experiences of migration. Today’s refugees are no different from those of centuries ago – like them, they are human beings who, in order to have a life beyond survival, need to work. Obvious though this point is, the current obsession in the media and parliament is the apparent distinction between ‘refugee’ and ‘economic migrant’.

It is possible, however, to make such complexity simple, and to offer an accessible understanding of such migration dynamics. Migration experts have been drawing attention to the fact that immigration statuses – the classification of refugee, migrant or asylum seeker, for example – are never fixed but on the contrary are dynamic and mobile.¹ Rigid legal categories labelling individuals either as migrants or refugees have become increasingly obsolete, as they fail to reflect the personal and global realities of contemporary migration.² The stories of refugee-migrants themselves consistently show that people might start their journey as refugees but, like the Huguenots, become economic migrants later on. Scholars have widely recognised that contemporary migration is defined by its mixed nature and by continuity, rather than an opposition between forced and voluntary migration (see this video for Dr Nicholas van Hear’s clear outline of this matter).

The overlapping and mobility between immigration statuses is an aspect that was overlooked at the the time the Refugee Convention was drafted. Understandably, soon after the Second World War, the concern of the international community was focused predominantly on making sure that persecuted people would be protected outside their home countries. Economic migrants, on the other hand, could not benefit from a specific legal framework protecting their rights, since the ‘voluntary’ dimension of their migration implied they took responsibility for their own protection.

In recent decades, however, a greater emphasis has been placed on additional legal frameworks aimed at correcting the shortcomings of the Refugee Convention, in particular those based on International Human Rights law. A rights-based approach can in fact not only provide a framework for the protection of economic migrants but also enhance refugees’ protection, while at the same time establishing the universal human right to seek asylum.

Despite the availability of different legal frameworks governing migration and ‘refugee-ness’ today, there is no agreed position in policy making, advocacy and public opinion. Public opinion is characterised by narratives of ‘good and bad’ refugee-migrants, of ‘deserving and undeserving protection’, and of ‘inclusion and exclusion’. Refugees are mostly perceived as victims, but the moment they display willingness to economically improve their lives they are automatically seen as economic migrants and hence as undeserving of protection and support.

Satire on the Aliens Act – drawing of Britannia turning away a group of refugees who have just disembarked at a port, 1906. Part of the Migration Museum Project’s ‘No Turning Back’ exhibition. Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum.

Far from being new, this narrative partly finds its roots in another pivotal migration moment shown in the exhibition – 1905, when the Aliens Act was passed in Britain, the first legal framework regulating migration and based on the notion of  ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’ immigrants. The Aliens Act was the result of rising nationalism based on disproportionate fear about newly arrived refugees, mainly Jews, and migrants of Asian origins. A satirical drawing from the time, showing Britannia saying ‘I can no longer offer shelter to fugitives; England is not a free country’, aptly describes the feeling of rejection felt by Jewish refugees. Another pamphlet from the archives directs the visitor’s attention to the fact that rejection was felt not only by refugees but also by immigrants, with trade unions attempting to dismantle the unfounded belief that migrants were competitors in the job market and bad for the British economy. Through the various details of this migration moment, the visitor is also encouraged to think about the importance of keeping labour migration channels open to refugees today.

History reminds us that looking at migration through rigid binaries of ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’, ‘deserving’ and ‘economic’, risks reinforcing a dangerous divide that often underpins much of public opinion and policy making. What we witness today and the stories that migrants and refugees tell us bear a profound resemblance to the past and urge us to consider that a refugee-migrant should not be seen as a threat but rather as an asset to Britain and host countries in general.

¹ See, for example, Schuster, L (2005) ‘The Continuing Mobility of Migrants in Italy: Shifting between Statuses and Places’. Oxford: COMPAS and Bloch (2011)

² Zetter, R (2007) ‘More labels, fewer refugees: remaking the refugee label in an era of globalisation’, Journal of Refugee Studies, Volume 20, Issue 2, 1 June 2007, 172–192, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fem011

Talking about Roman migration in 2017

The past is not only a different country; it’s a contested one, too, and nowhere more so than in the extent to which Britain may or may not have been a ‘multi-racial’ society in earlier centuries. As with all debates of this kind, positions quickly become polarised and evidence exaggerated, with each end of the spectrum over-emphasising the historical record to suit its purpose. An example of this phenomenon was witnessed earlier this year, when a BBC cartoon aimed at school children attracted controversy. Hella Eckardt, an academic at the University of Reading whose work was quoted in the ensuing debate, reflects in this blog on both the evidence for a multi-racial Roman presence in this country and the best way of discussing it.

In August 2017, an educational BBC cartoon depicting the story of the son of a black commanding officer on Hadrian’s Wall caused controversy on social media.

A screen shot of the BBC’s “Life in Roman Britain”, with Quintus (right), the son of a Roman commander helping to build Hadrian’s Wall.

The alt-right commentator Paul Joseph Watson attacked the cartoon as a symbol of ‘political correctness’ and ‘rewriting history’, but multiple commentators then pointed out that there is a range of evidence for North Africans in Roman Britain.

The debate widened to consider ethnic diversity in the Roman Empire, and the question of how ‘typical’ long-distance migrants may have been in a province such as Britain. In classic Twitter and infowar style, much of the debate was vitriolic and toxic, clearly indicating that for some commentators the issue was about contemporary political concerns rather than ‘historical truth’. The Cambridge classicist Professor Mary Beard, in particular, wrote a very measured piece about the highly personal and aggressive abuse she received for making the academic case for ethnic diversity.

Reflecting on the controversy a few months on, and writing as one of the academics whose work was cited in the debate, I think it is important to move forward with reasoned debate and informed discussion, rather than aggressive and extreme polemic. It seems to me that there are two main issues: one is about the nature of the historical and archaeological evidence and the other about our ability to communicate these findings, especially when dealing with topics, such as migration or ‘race’, that are politically highly charged.

On the first point it is absolutely incontrovertible that the Roman Empire was characterised by relatively high levels of mobility, and that even in a marginal province such as Britain there would have been contact and interactions between Iron Age communities (themselves of course not uniform) and people from continental Europe, as well as North Africa or the Near East.

The drivers for movement included the Roman army and administration, but also trade and even tourism; in all these cases it would often have been high-status individuals who moved. The flip side of the coin is that the Roman Empire was obviously not a multi-cultural utopia, and conquered populations and slaves were moved against their will.

For Hadrian’s Wall, the place featured in the BBC cartoon, the historical (e.g. accounts of the emperor Septimius Severus, himself from modern Libya, meeting an ‘Ethiopian’) and epigraphic evidence (e.g. inscriptions mentioning officers or units) for an African presence have long been known. More recently, new scientific techniques have added important new information. Isotope analysis examines the chemical signatures preserved in teeth, which essentially reflect the water and food that a person consumed in childhood. The technique is better at excluding local origin than pinpointing specific origins; among the non-locals we can normally only say broadly that an individual came from somewhere cooler or warmer.

The project I led at the University of Reading identified a number of late Roman individuals in Scorton, York and Winchester who appear to originate from cooler areas, such as Germany or Poland, which makes sense, because we know that mercenaries from those areas served in the Roman army.

Another technique measures various aspects of ancient skulls, to establish African or Caucasian ancestry. For example, a 4th-century skeleton from York was identified as the remains of a woman aged 18–23 years, buried with rich grave goods that included both locally available (jet) and exotic (ivory) bracelets as well as an array of other impressive grave goods. Her facial characteristics suggest that she had a mixture of traits common in European (‘white’) and African (‘black’) populations but the results of the isotope analysis are ambiguous – she does not appear to have grown up in North Africa, so may be a second-generation migrant.

Finally, there is DNA analysis, as in the case of the so-called ‘headless Romans’ from York. These were discovered in an unusual cemetery of mainly male individuals, many of whom had been beheaded and some of whom bear injuries from combat. Genome analysis demonstrated that, while most appear to be of broadly ‘British’ descent, one individual may be from the Middle East; he also has an unusual isotope signature.

Reconstruction of the ‘Ivory Bangle Lady’ © Aaron Watson & University of Reading.

All archaeological data have to be interpreted, and it can be difficult to convey the complexities of the material in broad-brush summaries. It is also almost impossible to quantify numbers of incomers – especially given that scientific analysis has so far largely focused on unusual burials, thus potentially skewing the impression we form. While many of the right-wing commentators are focusing on ‘race’ in terms of skin colour, in the Roman world ethnicity was viewed quite differently: factors such as language (did the individual speak Latin or Greek well?), education, wealth, kinship and place of origin were probably more important. Archaeology and the reconstructions of the past we create are characterised by uncertainties, but conveying those complexities adds to our interpretation and allows us to challenge our own preconceptions. It is especially important that school children, who in Britain cover ‘the Romans’ at Key Stage 2, learn that the Roman Empire was not homogenous, but characterised by the interplay of locals and newcomers in wonderfully complex ways.

To convey these latest scientific findings, I have worked with the Runnymede Trust to create a website and learning resource for Key Stage 2 and the Ivory Bangle Lady also features in a new website about the history of migration in Britain aimed at older pupils.

Educational website on Romano-British diversity (http://www.romansrevealed.com/).

In conclusion, while contemporary concerns will inevitably shape what questions we ask of the past, it is clearly wrong to expect straightforward validation for current political points from archaeological evidence. What archaeology can do is to provide an increasingly rich and complicated picture of life, which we as a society can compare and contrast with other societies and different time periods.

Hella Eckardt teaches provincial Roman archaeology and material culture studies at the University of Reading. Her research focuses on theoretical approaches to the material culture of the north-western provinces, and she is particularly interested in the relationship between the consumption of Roman objects and the expression of social and cultural identities.