| Abstract: | Between 200,000 and 300,000 refugees have been admitted to the United Kingdom under various schemes since the end of the Second World War, and their absorption into the British economy has been quite satisfactory, their establishment being facilitated by an initial period of practically full employment, and their determination to become self-supporting. They have, however, failed to settle down and to develop the necessary sense of security. Three years of directed labour, the continuing preferential treatment of British workers in respect of promotion and placement in skilled jobs, and the provision that foreign workers have to be dismissed first in case of redundancy of labour, have kept awake the “refugee complex” and have promoted the wish to emigrate further to the New World, where the refugees hope to find complete equality and freedom. The acute housing shortage has added to the difficulties of settling down, especially in the southern regions of England, where up to the present time it has been impossible to close the Polish Family Hostels and the workers' hostels which had been established in 1946 and 1948 as a temporary measure to house the refugees when they were admitted to this country in larger numbers. Unpreparedness of the British population and of the refugees through insufficient information about the policy underlying their admission, difference of language, habits and temperament, coupled with the isolation of the refugees in the hostels, has made mutual understanding and appreciation almost impossible and although conditions are gradually improving, the gap is being bridged only slowly after so many years of misunderstanding and apprehension, and it will probably be closed only by the next generation growing up together in England. |
