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The introduction canvasses key themes to emerge from migrant testimony: traditional sojourning and adventure migration, the casual adoption of global mobility and global identities from the 1960s, the conjuncture of geographical mobility with occupational and marital and family mobility, and the continuing importance of traditional ties of family alongside changes in migration practices and attitudes. An underlying theme is the complex interplay of change and continuity in migration history. It explores the social and economic contexts in Britain and beyond which set the stage for dramatic changes in migration practices like serial migration in and between developed countries. It argues the case for exploration of modern mobility through the experience of the British ‘diaspora’, and the value of oral testimony and life histories for exploring migrants’ mentalities at a time of heightened individualism and focus on personal desires. It stresses the importance of gender during a time of transformational social change and points to the impact of social mobility, in the population and among migrants, at a time when receiving countries were tightening visa qualifications.

This chapter makes the case that displacement was one of the major responses by Native Americans to the encroachment of European powers. It first considers the nature of Native American movements in the Southeast during the centuries immediately prior to the arrival of the first Spaniards in Florida. Then, displacement is further broken down into several categories of population relocation: serial migration, diaspora, and flows to frontiers. Reasons for displacement vary greatly: destructive wars, depredations of slave trading, and incursions of colonial settlements undermined settlement stability to a historically unprecedented degree, while perceived opportunities provided yet another major stimulus for migration and relocation, as families and towns moved to locations advantageous for trade, travel, and communication. This examination of population movement opens social, environmental, and political discussions concerning the paths of Native American peoples in North America.

This chapter concludes the chronological section by examining testimony of migrants from the 1990s, pointing to intensification of cosmopolitan mentalities and motivations like lifestyle enhancement. It focuses in some depth on stories of two generations of women through the separate but connected mobilities of mother and daughter, both global in outlook but deeply loyal to adopted localities. Noting that scholarship on globalisation has done little to relate the macro trends to mentalities of ordinary people, it suggests that modern migrant story-telling might shed light on how the globalising world has impacted upon wider populations as well as migrants themselves. It scrutinizes politically motivated mobility, particularly inspired by hostility to British politics and class, involving both expatriate employment, transnational marriage and serial migration; this is juxtaposed against family migration and travel seemingly devoid of political motivations but imbued with a virtual lifetime of adventure motivations. The chapter concludes with a case of a woman’s serial migration from Britain to Europe to South Africa to Australia, highlighting experiences of the ‘trailing spouse’ of an expatriate husband, of their later migration, and the impact of frequent mobility on marriage and family as well as on shifting identities.

This chapter examines features of the first generation of postwar British emigrants which foreshadowed the later rise of modern global mobility. The drive of Anglophone immigrant countries to attract skilled employees, coinciding with the spread of higher education and social mobility in Britain, opened the way for aspiring migrants to use migration as a means to social advancement and entrepreneurship. Continuing global mobility, once the preserve of elites, was becoming democratised, and young travellers seized on the facilities to pioneer new forms of serial migration. At the same time the shadow of the British Empire continued to exert its influence on potential migrants with backgrounds in the military and imperial administration. Some faced the threat of downward social mobility, but, comfortable with global transience, turned to continuing migration as a means of comfortable survival. ‘Nomad daughters of the Empire’ describes women’s adaptation to new forms of mobility, and ‘the empire of the imagination’ explores ways in which the power of the ‘colonial dividend’ worked to stimulate thoughts of ‘wanderlust’ and serial migration, setting powerful precedents for the next generation of mobile Britons.