Paper short abstract:

There has been an evident upsurge in Bulgarian migration to the UK in the years following the economic crash in 2009. The ethnographic data coming out of my recent fieldwork among Bulgarian migrants points to the significance of the utopian cultural construction of the West in explaining this phenomenon.

Paper long abstract:

The increasing popularity of the UK as one of the top migration destinations amongst Bulgarians is in contrast to the hostility with which migrants are met in British society and the precarious working and living conditions they often experience. This paper claims that this paradox of popularity despite hostility cannot be adequately explained with economic push factors or by conceiving of contemporary migrants as rational individuals who are seeking to maximize their utility. Instead, it argues that a collective imaginary of the West as offering the possibility of attaining a better quality of life, success and wealth, is the main factor encouraging Bulgarian migration to the UK. This argument follows Appadurai's (1996) theory of the joint effect of mass media and migration on the 'work of imagination'. By de-constructing the image of the West, as represented in would-be migrants' narratives, it is demonstrated how migration is not just a 'coping strategy' for economic survival but also as identification with imaginary spaces of belonging.