Mobile Precarious Workers? the Case of Post-2008 Latin American Onward Migration from Spain to the UK

Contemporary studies on intra-EU (European Union) migration have paid insufficient attention to forms of secondary mobilities, either in the case of mobile European citizens or, more significantly, in terms of third country migrants who have acquired citizenship in one Member State and subsequently migrated to another. This paper will contribute to this area of research by focusing on the case of Latin American secondary migrants with EU citizenship who have undertaken onward mobility from Spain to the UK post-2008. Existing studies have found that, for Latin American migrants, it is common to enter the EU via Spain, Italy and Portugal, where they expect obtaining citizenship to be easier, e.g. through historical and family connections. However, subsequent onward mobilities seem to have become more common after the onset of the financial crisis and its harsher consequences in southern EU countries. Drawing on a small-scale transnational project involving secondary data analysis and 25 semi-structured interviews with key informants from Latin American migrant voluntary organisations and statutory services working with migrants in Spain and the UK, this paper will explore the emerging picture of the contexts, causes and motivations that underlie these increased onward mobilities and the situations faced by secondary migrants and their families when settling in the UK. Despite these secondary migrants’ hopes of escaping financial difficulties and unemployment in Spain by making use of the right to free mobility which they have acquired with their European citizenship, settlement in the UK becomes fraught with initial arrival problems (i.e. lack of language skills, access to jobs and housing) and the vulnerabilities of joining many fellow Latin American migrants’ socially disadvantaged position as precarious workers in the UK.