The onward migration-family nexus: the lived experiences of London's onward Colombian migrants from Spain and their families
Keywords: youths
families
onward migration
Colombians
London
Brexit

This research investigates the onward migration-family nexus by centring the lived experiences of Colombian families who onward migrated from Spain to London after the 2008 global financial crisis. Onward migration can be broadly defined as the process whereby migrants leave the country in which they settled for a period of time and migrate to another country when circumstances change. In this thesis, the onward migration-family nexus is understood as the complex ways in which families shape onward migration and the multifaceted transformations they undergo as a result.
This thesis draws from fieldwork conducted from June 2020 to May 2021 which strived to capture the voices of onward Colombian parents, onward migrant youths of Colombian descent, as well as staff, volunteers, and leaders of organisations and groups run by and for Latin American migrants in London. This dissertation also draws from fieldwork conducted between February and May 2021 as part of a Public Engagement with Research Project exploring the impact of Brexit and COVID-19 on London’s Latin American community.
Taking the format of an integrated thesis, this dissertation includes an overall introduction (Chapter 1), four substantive chapters in the form of standalone journal articles each addressing a unique research question, and an overarching conclusion (Chapter 6):
- Chapter 2 examines how onward migration unfolds for families, showing that onward migration is shaped by relational factors and may be achieved through and after diverse forms of international im/mobility.
- Chapter 3 explores how families organise their social reproductive work in the onward migration process, highlighting how gendered social reproductive arrangements are renegotiated to address the challenges and opportunities families encounter in the process.
- Chapter 4 sheds light on the experiences and identities of onward migrant youths, demonstrating that onward migration provides young people with opportunities to claim identities they had limited access to in the previous country of residence and to form new ones drawing from multiple and new frames and scales of references.
- Chapter 5 explores how onward migrant families experienced the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS)—a programme developed by the British Government to allow EU nationals and their non-EU family members to retain residence following the UK withdrawal from the EU—showing that for onward migrants and their families, the EUSS represented a formalisation of the discrimination and bordering practices they were experiencing before the EUSS and a return to a position of legal vulnerability and uncertainty.
Ultimately, this thesis advances the conceptualisation of onward migration and the understanding of the transformations that families and young people undergo following this process. Equally important, this thesis contributes to making visible the experiences of Latin Americans in the UK—a large community which lacks institutional recognition despite various campaigns advocating for it—while advancing policy debates on Brexit.