Paper short abstract:

Drawing on participant observation and interviews with 25 Italians and Bulgarians, this paper uses emotions as lens in order to better understand highly skilled migrants’ complex and changing relationship with the country of settlement.

Paper long abstract:

A new neo-assimilationist climate is sweeping across Europe, drawing attention not only to the fragility of intra-European mobility but also to the integration processes’ to socio-economic and political changes. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union is a case in point, which also illustrates the precarity of settlement rights. Thus, Brexit as an ‘unsettling event’ (Kilkey and Ryan, 2020) provides us with an interesting contextual backdrop against which we can re-consider and re-evaluate the relative privilege associated with highly skilled European migration. Respectively, drawing on ethnographic data (participant observation and interviews) from 25 Italians and Bulgarians, this paper uses emotions as a lens to better understand highly skilled migrants’ complex and changing relationship with the country of settlement. Focusing on the costs of migration in the context of a changing socio-economic and political climate, we explore the gendered nature of integration and re-evaluate the meaning of relative privilege often assumed in highly skilled status. By paying particular attention to the subjectivities of the migration process, we offer new ways of thinking about the process of migrant integration.