This book set out to review changes in attitudes towards immigrants in Britain and the language that was used to put the changing feelings into words between 1841 and 1921. It examined the use and the meanings of the word alien in that period, the overtones it bore and what people meant or felt when they applied it. This study drew on dictionary and newspaper sources and analysed them within a context of census reports, parliamentary records and other publications, with the help of the existing historical and linguistic literature, in order to gain a greater understanding of how opinions about immigrants came about in a modern West European country.

This is of course not the ultimate work on its subject; it was written to encourage further debate and publication in order to clarify, broaden and deepen our appreciation of the process of integration of immigrants and their descendants into Western societies. To achieve that aim much more work remains to be done and the conclusions drawn here only have a limited and provisional character.

However, using a historical and linguistic method for an analysis of so far relatively unused primary sources, this book offers some novel findings. It has found that changes in the meaning and use of the word alien in Britain coincided during the period between 1841 and 1921 with the expression of changing attitudes towards immigrants in this country and the modification of the British variant of the English language. When people in Britain in these years used the term an alien, they meant most likely a foreigner, stranger, refugee or immigrant. More specifically, in 1841 an alien denoted a foreigner or a stranger, notably a person residing or working in a country who did not have the nationality or citizenship of that country. By 1921 an alien mainly signified an immigrant in Britain. In 1841, in the sense of being foreign, alien already had various, and sometimes negative, connotations, for example, invoking hostility and repugnancy, but the word had not yet acquired its modern meanings such as unfamiliar, unlikeable and frightening.

In general, the use of the word alien in Britain rose significantly between 1841 and 1921, particularly at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.