Oceans of Feeling - An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain

This book takes the postwar Caribbean migration movement to Britain and explores it from a new, history of emotions orientated approach. Elevating emotion and felt experience to a well-known historical narrative, it enriches our understanding of this defining moment in modern British history, which irrevocably altered the nation''s demographic makeup, cultural fabric and conception of national identity. Reconstructing migrant experience, asking what it felt to be there and how these feelings, individual and collective, influenced the sequence of historical events, this book interrogates what it meant to be part of the postwar Caribbean migration movement. From the emotions that drove them to migrate, to the disillusionment they felt upon arrival, to the solutions they formulated when confronted with fear, hostility and violence, migration is an inescapably emotional phenomenon, and this particular episode is no exception. An Emotional History of Caribbean Migrants in Postwar Britain grapples with these messy entanglements in a systemic way to understand the cultural worlds from where these migrants came, the emotional worlds of postwar British society, and how they navigated through them.

List of contents

Introduction: What have you done with our dreams?
1. Migrant emotivations
2. Departures, journeys, arrivals
3. Romance, family, childhood
4. Hatred, violence, fear
5. Balms to the aching souls: Migrant parties as Emotional Refuge
Epilogue: The ghosts of Windrush past

About the author

Ryan Tristram-Walmsley is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Swansea University, UK. Supervised by Rob Boddice, he received his PhD in 2023 with distinction from the University of Kent, UK and Universidade de Porto, as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Early-Career Researcher.

Product details

• Authors: Ryan Tristram-Walmsley, Ryan Walmsley
• Assisted by: Susan J Matt (Editor), Peter N Stearns (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 01.11.2025
• EAN: 9781350541634
• ISBN: 978-1-350-54163-4
• No. of pages: 256
• Series: History of Emotions
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000, European History, HISTORY / Caribbean & West Indies / General, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, Caribbean islands, British & Irish history, Migration, immigration & emigration, Migration, immigration and emigration, The Americas, HISTORY / Wars & Conflicts / General