8.5C Former Colonies & Patterns of Migration

• • Patterns of migration between former colonies and the imperial core country have always been strong and has continued after independence
  • A key connection is often language and culture
  • Migration from Jamaica and India to the UK
  • Northwest Africa (Maghreb region) to France
  • These patterns are still evident and important in changing the ethnic composition and cultural heterogeneity within countries of destination
• Britain and former colonies

  • After WWII, there was a general shortage of workers, and many people migrated from past colonies, to fill those gaps in employment 
  • People from Jamaica (Windrush generation) travelled to the UK to work in transport and healthcare
  • Some migrants were directly recruited for their skills (London Underground recruited bus drivers from Kingston in Jamaica)
• Britain and former colonies

  • The newly established National Health Service, lacked trained doctors after the war and many doctors travelled from India, Pakistan and parts of Africa to Britain
  • Medical schools in India used the same textbooks as British teaching hospitals allowing Indian doctors to fit in with the way medicine was conducted in the UK
  • Other people simply migrated, as was their legal right, as British citizens
  • All these movements have increased British cultural heterogeneity, particularly in London, Liverpool and Bristol