‘Have you got the Britísh?’: narratives of migration and settlement among Albanian-origin immigrants in London

Abstract

Studies on migration and integration in Britain have noted the paucity of research on ‘new’ migrants, especially ‘illegal’ migrants and asylum seekers. This paper focuses on one understudied group – Albanian immigrants and their children – and looks at their migration and settlement, based on sixty interviews conducted in two phases either side of a 2003 mini-amnesty that gave many indefinite leave to remain. This regularization is the fulcrum around which our analytical narrative is built. Focusing on the interaction of migrants' agency with host-country structure, the paper shows that an unsettled asylum policy and delays in implementation have had deleterious effects on migrants' integration and sense of belonging, even after citizenship acquisition. As they search for a social and ethnic positioning within a multi-ethnic host society, the eventual realization of Albanians' migration project is accompanied by culture shock, intergenerational difference and ambivalence towards integration.

Keywords:

• asylum policy
• regularization
• integration
• citizenship
• intergenerational relations
• Albanian migrants

Acknowledgements

Research for this paper was supported by Oxfam GB and by a Marie Curie Doctoral Fellowship held as part of the Integration of the European Second Generation Research Training Network. We acknowledge the help of the Albanian organizations Ardhmëria (The Future), Globalb, Shpresa in London and all the research participants for sharing their migration experiences.

Notes

1. Many Albanians from northern Albania sought asylum in Britain by presenting themselves as Kosovans. This ‘collective secret’ has become more widely known as time has passed (see Schwandner-Sievers 2004, p. 112; King, Dalipaj and Mai 2006, p. 431). More recently, an Albanian solicitor in London who has represented Albanian immigrants in their asylum applications advised those who posed as Kosovans to ‘tell the truth’ since, at a time when the Home Office is keen to clear old asylum claims and grant residence based on long presence and ties in Britain, many successful permit applications were by Albanians qua Albanians (see Naim Hasani, writing in the Albanian Mail, 115, 10 October 2009, pp. 1, 14).

2. We have dealt with these issues in two recent papers (Vathi 2011; Vathi and King 2011).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zana Vathi

ZANA VATHI is Associate Researcher at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research at the University of Sussex.

Russell King

RUSSELL KING is Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex.