Imogen Bayley, a Max Weber Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance, examines postwar migration history in her book, Postwar Migration Policy and the Displaced of the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1951. The book delves into the policies shaping the lives of displaced persons and the strategies they used to navigate a world rebuilding after the devastation of World War II.
"The largest community of displaced persons in the British Zone was Polish, representing over two-thirds of the displaced population," Bayley explains. "Although recorded in the British Zone as Polish, a growing Jewish displaced community distinguished itself both physically, on the site of the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, as well as rhetorically." These two communities, with their contrasting experiences, provide the foundation for Bayley’s comparative analysis. Her research shifts attention from the better-documented American Zone to the British Zone, illuminating how its distinctive administration and geography influenced displacement outcomes.
Bayley’s work uncovers the historical and geopolitical contexts that shaped the experiences of Polish and Jewish displaced persons, emphasising their contrasting trajectories in the aftermath of the war.
The sustained comparison highlights the unique challenges faced by the different groups and reveals the diverse structures of belonging that emerged as a direct result of a context of mass repatriation. "While Jews were widely accepted as de-territorialised, Poles were viewed as territorialised in the Polish state," Bayley says. "The fact of one’s being a Jewish Displaced Person, and de facto of the diaspora, was almost always enough to guarantee Displaced Person status. While admission to refugee care in the camps was certainly restrictive, it created for the first time an ideal profile of the political refugee."
However, as Bayley points out, "the attempt to establish on the ground definitional clarity between displaced Poles, in particular, on the basis of an artificial distinction between those passively displaced and those driven by the search for a better life, swiftly broke down." As the book makes clear, "the artificial distinction between the political-humanitarian passively displaced refugee and the socio-economically driven migrant in search of a better life exists only in idealised construction."
This divergence is reflected in the broader postwar trajectories of these two groups. Each chapter focuses on ways in which Displaced Persons themselves found ways to play the refugee and deemphasize their plans (particularly where based on economic rationale) in response to different migratory options. "In the postwar period, Polish and Jewish Displaced Persons developed a complete reorientation of their political model of reference. While Displaced Poles built up a diaspora in reaction to a Polish state undergoing a new form of foreign occupation, Jewish Displaced Persons looked to a state in Palestine in the aftermath of the extermination of the European diaspora."
Despite these differences, the book is attentive to important similarities. "America, for example, was widely perceived as an attractive migratory destination: offering to both the Polish and Jewish displaced communities well-established social networks, lively Yiddish and Polish cultural scenes, as well as the promise of economic and educational prospects," Bayley explains.
Resettlement policies during this period were driven more by politics and economics than by humanitarianism, Bayley observes. Jewish displaced persons, in particular, faced significant barriers. "Jewish applicants were deliberately excluded from most mass resettlement programmes," she says, reflecting the discriminatory priorities of the time. Poles, on the other hand, often accepted harsh labour agreements as their only way out of the camps.
Bayley’s work thus challenges any sharp distinction between forced migration and voluntary migration. "In the 1940s, the ‘refugee’ concept was being construed in its still prevalent form, defined in opposition to the ‘migrant,’" she explains. Bureaucracies were more sympathetic to refugees, seen as victims of external forces, but hostile to those perceived as economic migrants. However, she argues, this dichotomy often failed to capture the messy realities of displacement. "In practice, migration always involves constraint and choice in different proportions."
Her analysis draws compelling parallels between the challenges of the displaced persons era and today’s debates on migration and asylum. Bayley notes that current EU migration policies reflect many of the same tensions that defined the postwar years: "The politics of relief today have re-emerged in all their complexity, marked by the same extraordinary ambiguities of the displaced persons era." These historical echoes, she argues, underscore the ongoing difficulty of balancing humanitarian ideals with political and economic interests.
By combining historical research with migration and policy studies, Bayley offers a nuanced perspective on one of the 20th century’s most significant migration crises. "The systematic ethno-national comparison between Polish and Jewish communities offered in the book is also tested against the individual account," she says, underscoring the importance of personal stories in understanding the broader dynamics of displacement.
Postwar Migration Policy and the Displaced of the British Zone in Germany, 1945–1951 by Imogen Bayley is available at Palgrave Macmillan Cham, as part of the Palgrave Studies in Migration History book series.
Imogen Bayley is a fellow at the EUI’s Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies, the largest international postdoctoral programme in the social sciences and humanities in Europe. She is affiliated with the Florence School of Transnational Governance. Her research seeks to break down traditional boundaries between academic disciplines by fruitfully connecting the disciplines of history, policy studies, and migration studies.
Photo credits: A crowd of Jewish DPs stand behind British soldiers at a ceremony or demonstration in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp. [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hilde Jacobsthal Goldberg]