‘We all eat the same bread’: the roots and limits of cosmopolitan bridging ties developed by Romanians in London

Abstract

This paper investigates the social ties forged by Romanians in London with migrants of different origins in work and non-work contexts to offer a more nuanced view of ‘bridging’ social ties and related discussions of ‘everyday’ cosmopolitanism. Contrary to the overemphasis on ethnic ties seen as a form of bonding in migration research, the paper shows how Romanians bridge informally with many other migrants based on shared ‘non-native’ status. Alongside non-ethnically marked commonalities, ethnicity emerges as an important ingredient of cosmopolitan socialization, yet without necessarily signalling coexisting ethnic identities, as commonly assumed. Romanians' experiences further show that despite providing significant social and cultural capital, bridging ties with migrants, rather than natives, rarely accrue effective resources for social mobility. The findings suggest the need to disaggregate and qualify current understandings of ‘bridging’ social ties usually depicted in positive terms and uniformly as cross-ethnic relationships, or only linked with the ‘mainstream’ population.

Keywords:

• bridging social ties
• ethnicity
• cosmopolitanism
• migrant networks
• Romanians
• social mobility

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jon Fox, Viv Jackson, Paul Statham and the Ethnic and Racial Studies reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of this article. I am also indebted to all participants in this research, whose names have been changed to maintain anonymity. Financial support from the University of Bristol and the Bristol University Alumni Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. However, Romanians have been stigmatized in tabloid media, and racist incidents against Romanians and Roma (and other East European migrants) have been reported (e.g. the 2009 Belfast attacks, see the Guardian, 26 June 2009).

2. Italicized English phrases in interview quotations indicate participants’ use of English.

3. This does not exclude the possibility for migrants to also engage in ‘everyday’ racialization against, for example, the Roma (see Fox forthcoming).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Moroşanu

LAURA MOROŞANU is Research Assistant in the Business School at Oxford Brookes University.