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In Policing the City, Harris seeks to explain the transformation of criminal justice, particularly the transformation of policing, between the 1780s and 1830s in the City of London. As utilitarian legal reformers argued that criminal deterrence ought to be based on certain and rational punishment rather than random execution, they also had to control the discretionary authority of enforcement. This meant in theory and practice the centralization of policing in the 1830s, and the end of local policing, which was seen as corrupt, inefficient, and unsuitable for rational criminal justice. Revolutionary changes in policing began locally, however, in the 1780s. Such local changes preceded and inspired national reforms, and local policing up to the centralizing measures of the 1830s remained dynamic, responsive, and locally accountable right until its demise. Anxiety about policing had as much to do with the social origins of the police as it did about the origins of criminality, and control over the discretionary authority of watchmen and constables played a larger role in criminal justice reform than the nature of crime. The national, metropolitan, and City police reforms of the late 1830s were thus the culmination of a contentious argument over the meanings of justice, efficiency, and order, rather than its beginning. Harris's evidence reveals how what we've come to think of as “modern” policing evolved out of local practice and reflects shifts in wider debates about crime, justice, and discretionary authority.

Since World War II London has become a significantly multiracial city. Some of the earliest agents of its transformation were young men and women recruited in the late 1950s from Barbados, then a British colony, to work in the metropolis’s nationalized public transportation system and in its hospitals. These Barbadians met, married, settled in London, and raised Londoner children. In 1987-88 John Western conducted a series of interviews with twelve such families--both parents and children. Their vivid words fill A Passage to England with insight, human, and, often, poignancy. Here is a rich perspective on thirty years or more of London social history.

Western structured the interviews to allow the Barbadians a lot of freedom to discuss whatever came to mind concerning either their own life histories and achievements, or wider themes of culture, politics, and society. Topics covered range from matters of “race” to Margaret Thatcher and the change her decade in power has wrought in Britain. One development, for example, is the strikingly entrepreneurial spirit now embraced by some of the young British blacks, veritably “Mrs. Thatcher’s Children.” Ultimately, many of the interviewees focused on the changes they see in their ancestral island in the Caribbean, to which all of them have returned for visits. For this migrant generation especially, as the prospect of retirement begins to grow increasingly important, inevitable questions regard the definitions of “home” and “belonging” must be confronted: Does one stay in London--with one’s children and grandchildren--or does one return to Barbados, which for many seems no longer the same island as the one they left a working lifetime ago? Within the context of an ever-increasing complement of geographically mobile people worldwide, Western’s study provides unique insights into the particular ambiguities a particular set of person have wrestled with at a particular moment in history...but the import of the Barbadian Londoners’ story is universal.

The first comprehensive volume in English from one of Hungary’s most popular twentieth-century writers. 

Iván Mándy (1918–1995) has been called “the prose poet of Budapest,” and this volume of short stories presents the first comprehensive collection of his work in English. His early oeuvre created an urban mythology full of picaresque characters inhabiting the seedier neighborhoods of the city: its flea-market stalls, second-run cinemas, and old-fashioned coffeehouses. The stories from the later decades of Mándy’s life, often bordering on the absurd, introduce many autobiographical elements spun around the author’s alter-ego, János Zsámboky, whose hapless adventures on a rare trip abroad constitute this group of stories, including “Postcard from London.” Mándy’s unique style at times borrows techniques from films and radio plays, his quirky cuts creating a flicker of images seen in the mind’s eye. Memory and perception, time and place spin in narrative legerdemain that invites and rewards the reader’s active participation.

When the state withdraws support, migrant mothers build their own safety nets—a look at the strategies and struggles of those raising children under immigration insecurity.

Precarious Motherhood is a deeply human investigation of the lives of racially minoritized mothers as they navigate the intersecting challenges of financial hardship and the UK’s hostile immigration policies. Based on thorough ethnographic research, Rachel Benchekroun examines how these mothers forge relationships to access support, maintain their children’s well-being, and carve out spaces of belonging in an often unwelcoming system. The book captures the resilience and the relentless precarity of motherhood in migration, where every relationship shapes social barriers and everyday survival.

Through the voices of over twenty migrant mothers, this work sheds light on the personal and political dimensions of motherhood. It provides critical insights into state policies and social infrastructures that shape migrant lives, making it a valuable resource for scholars of migration and social justice.