Introduction

Labour mobility programmes in the post-war decades were not only concerned with the movement of workers within the UK. Debates over whose presence or absence was necessary in the pursuit of economic growth and community well-being also related to broader questions concerning international migration and the types of policy that the UK should pursue. On the one hand, the supported emigration of workers to expanding parts of the Commonwealth had represented a key foreign and economic policy objective since the late 19th century. The mission to ‘people the Commonwealth’ with UK subjects was seen to have both political and economic dividends in creating pro- UK countries across the world that would provide guaranteed export markets for UK products. On the other hand, from the 1950s policy also became focused on the (often reluctant) promotion of international immigration as a vehicle to ‘rebalance’ labour markets in expanding regions and thereby underpin the modernisation of the British economy. During the 1950s and 1960s it became clear that notions of ‘essential’ work would have to be expanded to include those areas of the economy in which labour shortages were having the greatest impact, partly as a consequence of emigration policy.

Drawing on archival sources this chapter focuses on intra- Commonwealth migration during the post-war decades and examines how and why international migration policies emerged, what their core principles and rationalities were, and what impact they had on spatial labour markets and economic development trajectories. The emergence of such programmes was extremely controversial and this was reflected in (and in part produced by) government policies that were muddled and at times contradictory. Despite being commonly associated with globalisation and modern forms of governance, the chapter shows that concerns over how labour mobility should be structured and in whose interests underpinned the politics of migration throughout the period of post-war Keynesianism. The rationalities and practices of policy were underpinned by relational understandings of citizenship (see Rose, 1999a) in that immigrants were seen as relationally different types of citizens and workers to those in existing communities who should be treated differently to ‘native’ citizens. The former's presence had to be directly related to the well-being of the latter and the chapter shows how such decisions were taken and what the rationalities and practices of government policy were.