Transnational Journeys and Domestic Histories‪.‬

In Mike and Stefani, an Australian documentary film released in 1952, a family group--Mike, Stefani, their young daughter and Mike's adolescent nephew--are shown on board ship, bound for Australia. (1) The displaced persons (DP) camp in Germany that they are leaving is only one of a number of liminal places on which the film focuses. These include the labour camps in Germany to which Mike and Stefani are deported as enforced workers during the Second World War, and the immigration office where they undergo a rigorous interview about their application to enter Australia. Ron Maslyn Williams, the film's producer and writer, reversed Mike and Stefani's journey, travelling from Australia to Europe to research the film, and visiting every DP camp in Germany. To save money, he travelled in an International Refugee Organisation ship. (2) This essay considers the potential of histories of transnational movements of people, comparative histories of particular movements, and the erosion of boundaries between British domestic and imperial history, to expand and revise social histories of place. It does so through looking at a particular case-study: that of nineteenth- and twentieth-century British domestic life and work. I begin by tracing the historiography of the most common site of domestic work--the home--looking at two main impulses that gave rise to increasing interest in the home in historical work on Britain, the first foregrounding questions of class, and the second questions of gender and class. Historians of Britain were slow to take up questions of race and ethnicity. A main focus of the essay is on how such questions are raised through a consideration of transnational migrations of people which, in a British context, often involves making connections between domestic and imperial history. But I also consider enforced migrations through the movement of refugees--a neglected area in historical work, including work on Britain.