This chapter describes the mobilisation of Chagos islanders in Mauritius. Chagossian groups have historically been united concerning their desired ends, with a shared focus on compensation and the right to return to the Chagos Archipelago. Competing Chagossian groups have, however, disagreed on whether negotiation or litigation is the best means to achieve these aims. The chapter outlines these tensions before focusing on the ideological and pragmatic disagreements within and beyond the community concerning two key issues. The first is debates about whether Chagos should be under British or Mauritian sovereignty. The second is debates about the legitimacy or otherwise of the US military base on Diego Garcia, which is seen by some as a necessary opportunity for employment and by others as conflicting with their visions for the resettlement of Chagos.

This introductory chapter first sets out the purpose of the book, which is to explore Chagossians' recollections of forced displacement, their reformulations of the homeland, their challenging lives in exile, their experiences of onward migration, and their attempts to make home in successive locations. It then details the Chagossians' forced displacement from the Chagos Archipelago and the onward migration to the UK. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter continues Chapter 5's ethnographic focus on the Chagossian community in Crawley, while revisiting the themes of home and homeland explored in Part II. It starts by revisiting debates amongst scholars of migration and displacement about the distinction between ‘forced displacement’ and ‘voluntary migration’. It asks to what extent Chagossians contrast their forced displacement from Chagos to Mauritius with their onward migration from Mauritius to the UK. The data reveal that experiences of onward migration to the UK and settlement in Crawley have challenged Chagossians' preconceptions of Britons and of life in the UK, and subtly altered their assessments of Mauritians and life in Mauritius. Next, the chapter examines the degree to which experiences of migration and settlement in the UK and changing visions of the future are delineated according to stage in the life course. It concludes that, despite very different experience of forced displacement and onward migration, claims of a desire to return to Mauritius take much the same form amongst migrant Chagossians in Crawley as claims of a desire to return to Chagos take amongst displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius.

This chapter reveals the similarities and differences between the Chagossians' forced displacement from the Chagos Archipelago and their onward migration to the UK. The ‘echoes of marginalisation’ include bureaucratic hurdles in acquiring citizenship status and the relevant identification documents, familial separation across continents, and the implications of relocation to an area of relative ethnic diversity, socio-economic deprivation, and educational challenges. The similarities go only so far, of course. In particular, unlike the high rates of unemployment in Mauritius in the 1960s, late 1970s to early 1980s, and again since the late 1990s, Crawley has had consistently extremely low rates of unemployment since its inception as a New Town in the 1960s. By and large, Chagossian migrants in Crawley have managed to find jobs and adequate housing, and have been able to access state welfare when required. Compared to their overwhelmingly negative assessments of their lives in Mauritius, they have reported a far wider range of experiences, both negative and positive, relating to education and employment, taxes and benefits, and racism and discrimination in the UK.

In 1945 the ideal family was thought to consist of a mother as dependant homemaker, father as breadwinner, and two, three or four children. However this model family was transformed over the following decades. Women have come to play an active role in the labour force, men are more involved in the home and lifelong marriage is no longer the common experience. By examining cultural representations of motherhood this chapter considers how these ideas of the proper conduct of mothers and fathers, inside and outside the home, were presented within society. It evaluates how women themselves related to these images and the difficulties they faced in doing so. The chapter demonstrates that motherhood at this time was a subject fraught with contradictions and ambiguities, and these tensions are reflected in women’s articulations of their attitudes and experiences.

Culture [kiltir] has been an issue for displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius for two reasons connected to the Chagossian struggle. First, in order to make a case for special treatment — compensation, the right of return, UK citizenship — they must show cultural uniqueness and demonstrate their distinctiveness from other Mauritian citizens and lack of integration into Mauritian society. Second, in order to be recognised as victims they must demonstrate suffering and loss as a result of the displacement. These two requirements imply contrasting notions of the characteristics of culture. On the one hand, emphasising distinctiveness implies certain static, authentic, or essential characteristics of ‘Chagossian culture’ distinguishing it from correspondingly authentic ‘Mauritian culture’. On the other hand, emphasising loss indicates that Chagossian culture underwent transformations as a result of the displacement, which requires recognition that culture is not static but changeable. This chapter investigates how Chagossian socio-political and socio-cultural groups have responded to the dual challenge of needing to represent both cultural continuity and cultural change. It starts by outlining the main issues in the anthropology of the politics of culture. It then explores how Chagos islanders came to identify collectively as Chagossians. Next, it illuminates processes of Chagossian cultural revival and gendered transmission in exile. Finally, it shows how Chagossians have simultaneously associated with and dissociated from other Indian Ocean island Creole cultures.

This chapter summarises the book’s principal conclusions about the experience of motherhood in England in the post-1945 decades. It concludes that motherhood is a subject fraught with contradictions and ambiguities and these tensions are reflected in the way women now articulate their attitudes to, and experiences of, motherhood. It demonstrates the real difficulties that mothers from all backgrounds have faced and which were visible in all aspects of their lives. However it also argues that the stereotyping of the immediate post-war period as one of conservatism before the changes that began in the late 1960s and 1970s means that women’s activism and the ways in which they were already organising themselves to improve their lives has tended to be disregarded. Women used their shared experience of being mothers of young children to develop social networks and form communities of women with the aim of alleviating some of difficulties and inequities they faced.

This chapter addresses the process of educating women to be mothers. It asks whether commentators in these decades, and women themselves, felt that they needed to be taught how to mother or whether they thought it came naturally to them. It then considers the debate about where this instruction should take place, and who should provide it: home, school, or medical professionals. The chapter charts how changing attitudes about the roles women should be performing, both at a governmental and societal level, determined how girl were educated to become adult women. Through an analysis of the oral history interviews the influence of these national debates on individual experiences is shown. Three principal discursive models surrounding education for motherhood are discussed: motherhood as innate, commonsensical, or a skill that needed to be learnt.

This chapter outlines the history of colonisation, settlement, and decolonisation in Mauritius and the Chagos Archipelago. It shows that the inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago were already marginal within colonial Mauritius, and that their marginality was compounded by their relocation to Mauritius during the decade around independence, which was a period of social, economic, and political unrest.