“Migrants have stood at the heart of modern Europe’s experience, whether trying to escape danger, to find a better life or as a result of deliberate policy, whether moving from the countryside to the city, or between countries, or from outside the continent altogether.”
We are delighted that Peter Gatrell’s newest book, The Unsettling of Europe
The Great Migration, 1945 to the Present (2019), is attracting a lot of attention from British and international media, as well as from readers in academia and beyond.
It was published in the UK by Penguin Books and in the USA by Basic Books. We are expecting a paperback edition in May 2020.
Here you can watch Peter’s interview for France24:
https://www.france24.com/en/20191001-perspective-peter-gatrell-unsettling-europe-migrants-population
Jonathan Portes’ review in The Guardian:
“One strength of the book is its focus on the stories of individual migrants, the communities in which they arrived, and their continued connections, at least in some cases, with their countries of origin. From an ethnic German who moved from Kazakhstan to Hamburg, to an Iranian anthropologist now living in Sweden, we get at least a glimpse of the complexity of the topic.”
Kapka Kassabova’s review in The Spectator:
“Through case studies, first-hand accounts, statistics and sources in film and literature, Gatrell makes it clear that the misnamed ‘migrant crisis’ (he stresses that the crisis and the tragedy belong to the refugees of war), was the crest of a wave whose origins lie in an obscene, unacknowledged inequality between and within countries and continents. There is a cognitive dissonance among the privileged EU nations who have benefited from migrants, economically and culturally, but are slow to write this into their national narratives. His last reflections are on how and why migration should finally be placed at the heart of the European story.”
David Aaronovitch’s review in The Times:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-unsettling-of-europe-by-peter-gatrell-review-r8xhqr8qz
“The Unsettling of Europe is a definitive book in which Peter Gatrell, a historian of population movement at the University of Manchester, proves that ‘what we used to have’ is a chimerical idea. As is the often repeated notion that today’s migration levels – immigration and emigration (although the second is rarely mentioned) – are ‘unprecedented’.”
You can find more information on the publisher’s website: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/300404/the-unsettling-of-europe/9780141984797.html