Finding housing, making home: Romanian migrants in post-Brexit/post-Covid UK
This report explores the ways in which Romanian migrants’ inequalities of labour and migration-status and their cultural values shape their experiences of housing and home in post-Brexit/post-Covid UK. Romanian migration to the UK is one of the least studied, most recent and the second largest among all European migrant groups.
• Economically, the differentials between Romania and the UK are significant as the former is the second poorest country in the EU and the latter the fifth biggest economy of the globe. Opportunities across the employment spectrum are thus widespread.
• Romanians were granted EU full freedom of movement only in 2014 (as opposed to 2004 for other eastern Europeans). Being thus a new migratory wave, it is not surprising that Romanians are the only EU migrant group that has significantly increased after the 2016 ‘Brexit’ vote, becoming the second largest in the UK after Poles.
• However, Romanians have arrived in the UK in great numbers at a time of an acute housing crisis, complicated by the overlap between the Brexit transition and the Covid-19 pandemic, a context that raises important questions regarding the economic circumstances and housing practices of those who decided to stay in the UK in order to obtain settlement status (and subsequent British citizenship, if they wish).
Read the report here:
Date: March 28, 2023 4:28 pm
Author(s): Adriana Mihaela Soaita, Moira Munro and Sergiu Gherghina
Categorised in: Equality Diversity & Inclusion, Place
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