The making of a mosaic: Migration and the port-city of Kingston upon Hull

Evans, Nicholas

Abstract

First paragraph:
When the results of the 2011 UK Census were made public in 2013 the BBC’s Six O’Clock News ran a live television broadcast from the city to herald a remarkable transformation – Hull was now home to a migrant population of 12,000 European migrants, 5 per cent of the total. Despite being one of the UK’s largest passenger ports and home to a university recruiting large numbers of overseas students, that Hull had been settled by European workers seemed to be a cause for national concern. Though the workers filled employment shortages in low paid sectors and bolstered under-populated areas along the Beverley Road district to the north of the city centre, the media portrayed the city as being deluged by a sizeable number of immigrants for the first time in its history. Numerous maritime metaphors were used to explain to ‘alarmed’ audiences what was happening. Although the city had proudly branded itself as a Gateway to Europe for the previous two decades, and urban planners had sought to persuade Europeans arriving and embarking through the North Sea Ferry terminal to ‘stop off’ in Hull, the 200 percent increase in the number of EU workers choosing to work in the city was deemed newsworthy locally and nationally. A handful of outsiders or ‘aliens’ had been associated with Hull since the foundation of the medieval port in the thirteenth century, but ‘difference’ was always seen as transitory and not part of the place’s DNA.

Citation

Evans, N. (2017). The making of a mosaic: Migration and the port-city of Kingston upon Hull. In D. J. Starkey, D. Atkinson, B. McDonagh, S. McKeon, & E. Salter (Eds.), Hull: Culture, History, Place (145-177). Liverpool: Liverpool University Press

• Publication Date: May 18, 2017
• Deposit Date: Jun 21, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 1, 2023
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Pages: 145-177
• Book Title: Hull: Culture, History, Place
• Chapter Number: 6
• ISBN: 9781781384190; 9781781384206
• Keywords: City of Culture; Migration; Transmigration; Hull; Diaspora
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/1348356