Chapter 1 explores the development of Sheffield, the ’Steel City’, and its steel-making, cutlery and flatware and coal-mining industries. Its character as a town and surrounding conurbation whose culture was dominated by the working classes rather than by the middle classes or industrialists is also examined. Sheffield, a town formerly renowned as the world’s foremost centre of steel production, had notoriety as a hotbed of working-class radicalism. This is discussed, as are its cultural insularity (largely through geography) and relative isolation from other major economic centres. The chapter discusses the crucial role of immigration in Sheffield’s remarkable rate of population growth during the nineteenth century. It provides context for an emerging non-white immigration within a period of rapid demographic change. Immigration – first from the rural hinterland, then from further afield and abroad – was particularly apparent in the growth of Sheffield’s East End steelworking district. The chapter’s aim is to provide a social, economic and cultural context for close analysis of the arrival and successful settlement of non-elite South Asians from the later years of the First World War until Indian Partition in 1947, the British Nationality Act of 1948 and the Windrush era of mass non-white immigration.

Volume 2 of The Cambridge History of Global Migrations presents an authoritative overview of the various continuities and changes in migration and globalization from the 1800s to the present day. Despite revolutionary changes in communication technologies, the growing accessibility of long-distance travel, and globalization across major economies, the rise of nation-states empowered immigration regulation and bureaucratic capacities for enforcement that curtailed migration. One major theme worldwide across the post-1800 centuries was the differentiation between “skilled” and “unskilled” workers, often considered through a racialized lens; it emerged as the primary divide between greater rights of immigration and citizenship for the former, and confinement to temporary or unauthorized migrant status for the latter. Through thirty-one chapters, this volume further evaluates the long global history of migration; and it shows that despite the increased disciplinary systems, the primacy of migration remains and continues to shape political, economic, and social landscapes around the world.