Tara Zahra, The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World (W.W. Norton & Co.: 2016)

Emigration State: Race, Citizenship and Settler Imperialism in Modern British History, c. 1850–1972

“…In comparative European terms UK politicians' reflex to promote settler‐imperial‐for‐itself during the 1920s is striking. According to Tara Zahra it was precisely in the wake of the First World War that anti‐emigrationist arguments sounded loudest amongst politicians in eastern Europe, where mass emigration led to worries about losing citizens and soldiers to other states (Zahra, 2016, p. 106). In Italy, this process was delayed until the late 1920s, after the USA's tightening immigration laws in the mid 1920s dashed hopes that emigration would continue to act as a vent for the poor.…”

“…7 As the political scientist Aristide Zolberg (2010) argues, throughout Europe and beyond states were transformed during the nineteenth century by what he has termed the 'exit revolution'. In similar vein, the historian of eastern Europe Tara Zahra (2016) writes that the realisation that 'emigration could be manipulated like the steam valve on a teapot […] as an instrument of policy, to serve both domestic and international goals was one of the most consequential political discoveries of nineteenth-century European states' (p. 6). 8 How does the UK's emigration state fare in this comparative context?…”