Katja Uusihakala: Imperial Investments, Gebunden

Klappentext

This book examines the legacy of a British child migration scheme that relocated British children to Southern Rhodesia between 1946 and 1962, with the aim of populating the colony with "fresh white stock". The selected children were resettled at Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College, a boarding school established in a disused RAF airbase outside the town of Bulawayo. This social engineering project sought to "rescue" children from what were predicted as undesirable futures in Britain and offer them a "better life" with prospects of social advancement. Yet, beyond individual salvation, the scheme emigrated the children with the intention that they would help sustain the racially segregated colonial order.

Building on long-term ethnographic research with former Rhodesian child migrants, now living in the UK, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, the book delves into their unique experiences of migration, displacement, and resettlement. It reflects on the lasting impacts of this state-sponsored "philanthropy," exploring how former migrants interpret, reconcile with, or reject the scheme's ambitions. It considers how they understand their past and navigate the disruptions, silences, and uncertainties that mark it. By highlighting these enduring emotional, social, and political repercussions, the book critically addresses how colonial histories matter in the present. Through the lens of former child migrants-whose kin relations were ruptured, who were disciplined into silence and suppression, and who have seen scant public recognition of their past-the book sheds light on the formation of memory through its gaps and silences. It contributes to understanding the complexities of memory in contexts of forced migration and displaced communities.

 

Katja Uusihakala is a University researcher in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is interested in politics and practices of memory in (post)colonial migrant and displaced communities. Her recent work examines the limits of postcolonial apologies, particularly in relation to child migration to colonial Southern Rhodesia.