Oxford Revise Edexcel GCSE History: Migrants in Britain, c800-Present Glossary

Africanisation
Africanisation is the process of giving control of government and businesses to Africans after countries in Africa gained their independence from the British Empire.

alien
Alien is an historical and now unacceptable term for a foreigner.

Anglo-Saxon
Anglo-Saxon is the name for someone who settled in Britain after the Roman army left in the fifth century.

antisemitism
Antisemitism is discrimination towards Jews.

artisan
An artisans is a skilled worker who make things by hand.

asylum seeker
Asylum is protection given to refugees by a government; an asylum seeker is a person who has asked a government to recognise their status as a refugee and is waiting to hear the outcome of their application.

ayah
An ayah was a young Indian woman hired to be a nursemaid or nanny by wealthy English families in India.

Black Power Movement
The Black Power Movement was a social movement that aimed to promote racial pride, equality, and civil rights reform.

blood libel
Blood libel was a false accusation that Jews were killing Christian children as part of a ritual.

British Civil Rights Movement
The British Civil Rights Movement is the struggle for an end to discrimination and for social justice for Black and ethnic minority people living in Britain.

Catholic
A Catholic is a Christian who follows the leadership of the Pope in Rome.

charter
A charter is an official document that grant a group of people, a company, or an institution specific rights and privileges.

Chartist movement
The Chartist movement was a collective attempt, in the nineteenth century, to gain political rights and influence for the working classes; the Chartists wanted all men over the age of 21 to have the vote.

Christendom
Christendom is the Christian world.

colour bar
The colour bar was a racist system that meant non-white people were denied the opportunities, particularly the job opportunities, that were available to white people.

Commonwealth
The Commonwealth is a voluntary organisation of independent, free countries, most of which were once part of the British Empire. Countries in the Commonwealth have close cultural, sporting, and trade links to Britain.

craft guild
A craft guild is a group of skilled workers who all did the same craft.

Danelaw
Danelaw was the part of England occupied by Vikings from the late ninth century until the Norman Conquest of 1066.

decolonisation
Decolonisation is the process by which a colony becomes independent of the country that colonised it.

denizen
A denizen is a foreigner granted rights in the country they have migrated to.

discrimination
Discrimination is the unjust treatment of people because they belong to a particular group; people experience discrimination because of their ethnicity, their age, their gender, and so on.

economic migrant
An economic migrant is someone who has moved to find better jobs or better living conditions; they are voluntary migrants.

enclosure
Enclosure was when the small strips of land and common land farmed by a community under the open field system were joined together to form bigger fields with fences around them farmed by one farmer.

enslaved
Enslaved means to be made a slave; to have one’s freedom to choose or act taken away.

entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is someone who sets up businesses.

European Union
The European Union is a group of 27 European countries that have common economic, social, and security policies; citizens of one member state have the right to settle in another member state.

feudal system
Under the feudal system, all land belonged to the monarch and was given to noblemen in return for taxes and soldiers during times of war.

Flemish
The Flemish were Dutch-speaking people from the Low Countries; thousands of Flemish Protestants found safety from religious persecution in England from the mid-1500s.

forced migration
Forced migration is when people are pushed to leave their homes and start a new life in another country; refugees and people who are brought to a country by their employers have experienced forced migration.

houses of multiple occupation (HMOs)
Houses of multiple occupation (HMOs) are properties rented by people who are not from one household (not from, for example, one family) but share facilities such as the bathroom and kitchen; this is sometimes called a ‘house share’.

housing association
A housing association is a non-profit organisation that rents houses and flats to people on low incomes or with particular needs.

Huguenot
A Huguenot was a French Protestant; thousands fled France in the seventeenth century due to persecution by the French Catholic government, creating Huguenot settlements all over Europe, in the USA, and in Africa.

immigrant
An immigrant is someone who comes to live permanently in a foreign country.

industrial revolution
The industrial revolution in Britain was a period when the economy changed from being based on farming and small-scale manufacturing in people’s homes to being based on large-scale manufacturing in factories.

industrialisation
Industrialisation is the process of developing industries that make things.

institution
An institution is a big organisations that manages the public life of a country, including government, law, and religion.

integrate
When a minority group comes to be seen to resemble the majority group, it is said to have integrated.

internal migration
Internal migration is when people move from one place to another place in the same country to live permanently.

interned
Interned means to be imprisoned for political or military reasons.

Interregnum
The Interregnum was the 12-year period, from 1649–1660, when England was ruled by Parliament and then by a Lord Protector, and not by a monarch.

laissez-faire
Laissez-faire is a French term meaning ‘leave alone’; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many people felt this was what the government should do: not interfere, not force people to change, and allow things to take their course.

letter of denization
A letter of denization was a letter given to a migrant after they had sworn an oath of allegiance to the Crown.

letters patent
Letters patent are official documents that grant individuals or groups of people an exclusive right or privilege.

medieval
Medieval is the name given to the period of history that runs from c400 to c1500; this period is also known as the Middle Ages.

migrate
People are said to have migrated when they moved from one place to another place to live there permanently.

mint
A mint is a place where coins are made.

moneyer
A moneyer is someone who makes (mint) coins.

‘mother country’
People living in colonies often view the colonising country as the ‘mother country’.

nomadic
Nomadic people travel from place to place rather than live in one location all the time.

Norman
Normans is the collective name for the invaders who settled in England after the Norman Conquest in 1066.

persecution
Persecution is the cruel or unfair treatment of one or more people because of their ethnicity, religion, or political beliefs.

plantation colony
A plantation colony is a large farm that grows crops such as sugar and tobacco, which are under the full or partial control of another country and run by settlers from that country.

pogrom
A pogrom is the organised and deliberate killing of a particular ethnic group.

prejudice
Prejudice is a negative opinion of someone or something that is not based on fact.

privateering
Privateering is when privately owned ships, acting with the permission of a monarch, attack foreign ships to steal their cargo and then share the stolen goods with the Crown.

Protestant
Christians who protested against the Catholic Church were known as Protestants; there are now many different Protestant churches, including the Church of England and the Quakers.

racism
Racism is prejudice or discrimination experienced by a person or a group of people based on their race.

Reformation
The Reformation was the sixteenth-century religious movement that saw the Church in Western Europe break into Catholicism and Protestantism.

refugee
A refugee is someone who is forced to leave their home to escape war, persecution, or a natural disaster.

rural
The term rural means describing the countryside.

settle
Settle means to set up home.

shebeen
A shebeen was a bar (perhaps in the front room of a house or a basement) where alcohol was served without a licence.

slum housing
Slum housing was overcrowded, run-down, poor-quality houses that had been declared unfit for humans to live in before the Second World War.

slum landlord
A slum landlord is a landlord who charges people high rents to live in run-down properties.

stereotype
A stereotype is a widely held and often prejudicial idea or image of something or someone.

Sus Law
Short for ‘Suspicion Law’, the Sus Law gave the police the power to stop, search, and arrest any person who they suspected was about to commit a crime.

sweatshop
A sweatshop is a small back-street workshop.

‘Swinging Sixties’
The term ‘Swinging Sixties’ is a nickname for the 1960s, the decade when social and sexual freedom increased for some young people.

Teddy Boys
Teddy Boys were young white men dressed in the latest fashions in the 1950s; they had a reputation for violence.

temporary migrant
Someone who has moved from one place to another to live for a short period while they complete a job is known as a temporary migrant.

urban
The term urban means describing towns and cities.

urbanisation
When the number and size of towns and cities increase, this is known as urbanisation.

vagrant
An historical word used to describe people who are homeless and don’t have a job; the term vagrant is considered offensive today.

Viking
Viking is the collective name for the invaders, many of whom came from Scandinavia, who had settled in England by the end of the ninth century.

voluntary migration
When people are pulled to a new country by the opportunities for a better life, this is known as voluntary migration; economic migrants have migrated voluntarily.

Walloon
A Walloon was a French-speaking person from the Low Countries; thousands of Walloon Protestants found safety from religious persecution in England from the mid-1500s.

Windrush generation
Windrush generation is the name given to Caribbean migrants who arrived in Britain after the Second World War.