Skip to main content
Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit

"I returned to being an immigrant": onward Latin American migrants and Brexit

Abstract

We explore the experiences of Onward Latin American Migrants (OLAs) in London - individuals born in Latin America who live in London and hold EU passports - with the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), a programme developed by the British Government to register EU nationals as part of the Brexit process. Drawing from qualitative fieldwork, we show that prior experience of being subject to immigration control in Southern Europe, including periods of irregularity, made OLAs anxious about maintaining lawful residence, favouring their uptake of the EUSS in an effort to re-secure their status and keep their rights. However, many of OLAs' non-EU family members could not apply successfully to the scheme given difficulties in meeting the eligibility criteria - a pattern exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. For many OLAs, the EUSS ultimately signified a loss of rights and secured status which took them long to achieve and a return to a position of uncertainty.

You might also be interested in :

Intergenerational narratives of citizenship among EU citizens in the UK after the Brexit referendum
The share of British naturalization applications by EU citizens increased in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum. This article offers unique insights into the range of motivations informing decisions to become British or not among EU families from new and old EU member states.
Methodological nationalism and the Northern Ireland blind-spot in ethnic and racial studies
Northern Ireland (NI) has been one of the central issues in Brexit. Yet, it barely featured in the discussions in the run up to the EU Referendum in 2016. This blind-spot regarding NI has been a long-standing feature of social science research on the UK. This article examines the NI blind-spot…
Marginalized (non)citizens: migrant youth political engagement, volunteering and performative citizenship in the context of Brexit
Migrants' opportunities for civic and political participation are often restricted by their legal rights. This paper reports on a study which included a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12-18 originally from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK…
Superdiversity's backstory
In Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity, Vertovec returns to the concept of superdiversity and reviews its uses in different disciplinary fields. Importantly…

Journal

ETHNIC AND RACIAL STUDIES

Authors

Dominiziana Turcatti (United Kingdom)
Carlos Vargas-Silva (United Kingdom)

Article meta

Country / region covered

Population studied

Year of Publication

Source type