ABSTRACT
The connection between migration and poverty also ignores inter-generational social mobility as suggested by Leo Lucassen. His examination of the descendants of post-war West Indian migrants demonstrates that they have witnessed some social mobility, although he accepts that relative poverty still characterizes Black lives in Britain. Migration to Britain over the past two centuries presents us with a series of continuities, as well as contradictions and breaks. In reality, over the last two centuries Britain has somehow emerged as a state in which racism remains endemic yet in which migrants and, more especially, their descendants, have often witnessed significant economic and social mobility. The contradiction demonstrates itself in the fact that the racism which has greeted migrants somehow runs together with an acceptance of difference, which has recently attracted the label of multiculturalism. Perhaps the most obvious contradiction in the history of immigration to Britain since c.1800 consists of the one between racism and multiculturalism.
