Yemeni Emigration History and Political Activism 65 After World War II, the demand for Yemeni labor on ships decreased due to the changeover to oil-based fuel; in both the United States and Britain, Yemenis were compelled to transition to the service sector and industrial manufacturing. In the mid-nineteenth century, Yemenis in both host-countries moved to industrial cities such as Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Toledo, and Detroit through chain migration to factories, where men often lived and worked together. Yemenis also worked in California, with as many as one hundred thousand men working as seasonal labor in the fields (Friedlander 1988). These groupings also corresponded with region and tribe much of the time and made social spaces, such as Yemeni cafes, primarily male spaces. These labor sectors often kept them socially isolated, with limited abilities to attain upward mobility and improve their English skills.15 Later on, Britain’s migration controls of 1962 also constricted Yemenis’ abilities to move back and forth between their places of residence in Britain and the South Yemen protectorate, which meant that they had to remain abroad in order to continue making wages. This separated many families, as wives and children were forced to remain at home as anchors to keep remittances flowing to extended families in Yemen (Halliday 2010[1992]). It is estimated that these men sent home $1,000 to $1,500 per year in the 1970s (Halliday 2010[1992]: 14). Inspired by the torrent of nationalism sweeping the Global South, Birmingham workers formed an organization called the Arab Workers Union to reflect popular support for Nasserism and nationalism. As themes of Arab nationalism circulated around the mahjar (Gualtieri 2009: 16), so too did Yemeni Baʻathist supporters compete internally with Nasserists. With the onset of the civil war in North Yemen in 1962, Yemenis mobilized in the community, keeping informed through letters exchanged with family members, the international circulation of Yemeni newspapers, and a radio station from the central Yemeni city of Taʻiz. According to Halliday (2010[1992]: 88), exiles in the British community contributed part of their earnings (totaling sixty thousand pounds) to the new Yemeni National Development Bank, which was risky due to Britain’s involvement in a war in the South. Halliday (2010[1992]: 88) also notes that a British news organization accused Yemenis of channeling funds to an insurgency in the South that had killed British forces in the Radfan uprising of 1963, leading to raids. Nevertheless, as workers donated about a pound a week to the effort, the Arab Workers Union collected donations to the National Liberation Front in the South “and transmitted the funds either through the NLF’s offices in Cairo or through individual couriers who returned home on temporary visits” (Halliday 2010[1992]). 15 hostile opposition to the Imam that might result in remittances not reaching dependants [sic] and also possible reprisals against relatives back home.” Yemeni workers did, however, participate in the US Farmworkers’ Movement. See Gualtieri (2020: 65–66). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press