During the nineteenth century, the proportion of UK migrants heading to empire destinations, especially to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, increased substantially and remained high. They included so‐called ‘surplus women’ and ‘children in care’, shipped overseas to ease perceived social problems at home. However, empire migrants also included entrepreneurs and indentured labourers from south Asia, Africa and the Pacific (plus others from the Far East, outside the empire), who relocated in huge numbers with equally transformative effects in, for example, central and southern Africa, the Cari ... More

During the nineteenth century, the proportion of UK migrants heading to empire destinations, especially to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, increased substantially and remained high. They included so‐called ‘surplus women’ and ‘children in care’, shipped overseas to ease perceived social problems at home. However, empire migrants also included entrepreneurs and indentured labourers from south Asia, Africa and the Pacific (plus others from the Far East, outside the empire), who relocated in huge numbers with equally transformative effects in, for example, central and southern Africa, the Caribbean, Ceylon, Mauritius and Fiji. The UK at the core of empire was also the recipient of empire migrants, especially from the ‘New Commonwealth’ after 1945. Analysis of these several flows shows that migrants— whatever their origins— similarly responded to pressures at home, perceived opportunities overseas, and, in many cases, the recruiting efforts of governments and entrepreneurs; and they all eventually benefited from improved forms of transportation. All shared similar challenges in transferring and adapting their cultural identities, and the rewards of migration likewise varied among them, as an analysis of return migration reveals. But differences are also evident, since many non‐white migrants were recruited into the lower level of a dual labour market headed by a white elite, and immigration controls limited non‐white entry even of British subjects into the ‘white’ dominions, and later into the UK. Legacies remain, but political change and shifts in the global labour market had eroded by the 1970s the once intimate relationship between migration and empire.