Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the strategic use of Italian citizenship by Bangladeshi migrants who, after having obtained their EU passport, plan to leave Italy and move to the UK. The paper will analyze the meanings of this onward migration as well as the onward migrants' agency and strategies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the strategic use of Italian citizenship by Bangladeshi migrants who plan to leave Italy and move to the UK.

This onward migration is represented by the Bangladeshi families interviewed as a strategy to improve their children's upward social mobility and as a coping strategy to the labour segregation which, in Southern Europe, channels migrants into specific niches of the labour market. Furthermore, the UK is represented as a more attractive destination than Italy because of its welfare system and because perceived as "culturally" closer, due to the so called "British multiculturalism".

The Italian-Bangladeshi families have interpreted the profound changes affecting Italy as something that is limiting the opportunities for their upward socio-economic mobility. They are strategically using their administrative status, their mobility capital and their international social networks to offer the future generations better opportunities for social achievement. Actually, the families that are leaving Italy are the most stable ones (from the point of view of administrative, housing and working conditions), those with more social, cultural, migratory and networks resources both in Italy and in the UK. In doing so, they demonstrate a truly European conception of citizenship and an agency that transcends national boundaries.