Drawing on in-depth interviews with young Italians and Romanians, representing two of the largest "old" and "new" European populations in Britain, this paper examines migrants' experiences in the spheres of work, family, and "home", and their narratives of "growing up" abroad, to enhance our understanding of youth transitions to adulthood in the context of intra-EU migration. Contrary to accounts that see migration as a strategy to either delay or advance adulthood, our analysis offers a more complex picture, showing how migration may unevenly affect transitions to adulthood, advancing some, and delaying others. Furthermore, we extend debates around the meaning of adulthood, illustrating the central role migration plays in generating feelings of "growing up", even when traditional markers of adulthood are absent, and how these are negotiated transnationally in relation to home-based peers, in ways that combine old and new understandings of adulthood.

Since the 1990s young South Europeans have been attracted to London by the dynamic labour market and cultural radiance of the city, but also pushed by unfavourable conditions in the labour markets of their origin countries. Subsequently, the Eurozone crisis, austerity politics and their socio‐political consequences have markedly intensified migration rates. But did they also signify a rupture in terms of the motivations, experiences and aspirations of the migrants? Drawing on in‐depth interviews with Greek, Italian and Spanish migrants of different educational levels, we find that post‐materialist motivations and pro‐migration dispositions prevail among the “crisis‐migrants”. Migration is seen and experienced as a step forward, rather than a disruptive force, signalling a positive message in defence of intra‐EU free mobility. Yet at times of neoliberal deregulation and economic and political uncertainty, aspirations for socio‐economic stability and settlement are also of growing importance, questioning mobility as the normative way of contemporary life.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract