Scholarly interest in race and ethnicity in modern British society is not a recent trend, but the focus has remained on the negative experiences of “excluded groups.” Academic research is therefore concentrated on interest in Irish immigrants from the mid-nineteenth century, anti-Semitism from the late nineteenth century onward, the British empire, race riots, and racial tensions associated with the landmark arrival of Windrush, and decolonization after the Second World War. Although such scholarship is extremely important, Joanna Herbert's Negotiating Boundaries of the City: Migration, Ethnicity, and Gender in Britain is a timely and necessary contribution to understandings of immigration and race in Britain. By moving away from a focus on global cities or those with a history of ethnic diversity, Herbert's interest in Leicester is a rewarding case study, which offers a detailed and nuanced understanding of the processes of migration, settlement, and integration. An examination of Leicester's South Asian community is central to the monograph, but the study is deft in illustrating the variety of experience and heterogeneity of this group by drawing attention to East Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis alongside Hindus, Muslims, and Christians.

Herbert's focus is in unpacking what she terms “the constructed story” (2) of Leicester's reputation as a tolerant multicultural city, especially in comparison to Bradford, Burnley, and Oldham, which all suffered significant periods of racial violence and tensions in 2001. By implication, Herbert writes, “the city was labelled Britain's most ethnically harmonious city and praised as a European model of multicultural success” (2). The book has three main concerns. First, it analyzes and deconstructs meanings of white ethnicity and charts the interaction between white residents and the South Asian immigrants. Second, it offers a more local perspective of interethnic relations and racialized identities and, finally, considers the “gendered experiences of migration and women's agency” (5). In doing so, Herbert depicts a more varied and complex image of experiences that are overlooked by Leicester's own “constructed story.”

The study is based on an analysis of forty-four interviews from existing oral history archives and forty-five life-story interviews undertaken by Herbert personally. Herbert is especially effective in exploring the methodological considerations here and in illustrating the demographic and ethnic composition of the interviewees and the implications of this for the research. Graduate students embarking on research based on personal testimony, interviews, and life stories could learn a great deal from Herbert's research, which employs a strikingly reflective and sensitive approach to these processes. Herbert notes the significance of her own identity, that of a white woman with a working-class background, and the implications of this for the interviews conducted and states how this made other white working-class women, in particular, reluctant to speak, especially on potentially contentious issues such as race and immigration. Although the use of oral history has been widely acknowledged as an effective way to chart and examine migrant experience and provide agency because they are often excluded from official documentation and records, Herbert's research suggests that its importance in uncovering further “hidden” voices, in this case of working-class women in regional cities, still remains. The book could have been improved by using further source materials, alongside personal testimony, such as local government archives and the press, to consider how far official discourse shaped or was contradicted by experience. Nevertheless, it offers a helpful understanding of the ways in which migrants were able to integrate into society and is especially effective in demonstrating the agency of South Asian female migrants.

Herbert structures the research around the idea of boundaries and draws attention to the way South Asian women experienced the double boundaries imposed both by British society as migrants and through the patriarchal system within the South Asian communities. The book provides a very nuanced and sophisticated understanding of this concept of boundaries, which is productive both in avoiding clichés and in offering a complex assessment of what these boundaries meant to both the migrant and local white populations. By implication, Herbert not only offers a vivid depiction of individual experience but uncovers broader theoretical and conceptual issues associated with the study of identity, which contributes to a growing body of scholarship that highlights the complex, and even paradoxical and contradictory, nature of selfhoods in British society from the early twentieth century onward.

There is much to commend about Herbert's research, and one of the most striking and rewarding aspects is the complex approach toward identity, the interest in gender and in whiteness. Any criticisms of the book reflect a desire to know more about the subject, such as exploring the experience of later generations and younger age groups of South Asians in Leicester. Although the focus on Leicester can be criticized for being overly narrow, it does ensure the book is very detailed. Rather than criticizing the project for its lack of comparative perspective, scholars interested in racial and ethnic identities can learn much from Herbert's approach. By developing and building on the methodological and theoretical framework shown here, scholars will be able to compare Herbert's findings on Leicester with those of other British towns and cities in order to move away from thinking about immigration in “exceptional” terms and make stronger comparisons and links with other historical periods. Herbert's research illustrates the real potential that scholars have to make contributions to policies on race, immigration, and urban planning, along with conceptual and historical ideas about identities and ethnicity.