ABSTRACT
Anti-alienism has usually been seen as a peripheral phenomenon in British society and politics. However, if anti-alienism is understood broadly as a form of discourse as well as a political movement it emerges as a continuous and central theme. Antialienism was the popular response to the first mass immigration into Britain, overwhelming earlier pro-alien traditions of asylum. Anti-alien legislation and the state apparatus for enforcing it established mechanisms for the transmission of anti-alienism as a concept, movement and set of practices from the 1880s to the 1940s. Seen in this context, internment in both world wars was made possible by accumulated administrative experience and a popular opinion habituated to anti-alien practices.
