It is commonplace today to say that the character of both migration and ethnic diversity in London is changing, a context in which Latin Americans are acquiring relevance as one of the fastest growing migrant groups within the UK.
Latin Americans started to appear in relatively large numbers in the early 70s when applications for refugees from the continent opened - noticeably those from Chile, as well as Argentine and Uruguay. The majority of them were political forced migrants, predominantly left-wingers, unionists and students, who left their countries due to facing persecution and exile imposed by the repressive dictatorships of the Southern Cone.
Today the migratory landscape appears transformed both in terms of the reasons that trigger movement.
and in relation to the places where those who increasingly arrive in Britain come from.
The research entitled ‘No Longer Invisible’ estimates that 186,500 Latin Americans live in the UK, of which 60% reside in London. Those from Brazil and Colombia form the largest groups, followed by Ecuadorians, Bolivians and Peruvians. As in the last available Census (2001) here, their main reasons for moving to the UK are primarily identified as ‘economic’, with more women than men moving between continents – yet we know that political and economic factors are deeply entangled.
This research also resembles those studies that have appeared in the Runnymede Trust’s publications (www.runnymedetrust.org), indicating that Latin-Americans in the UK are individuals with high levels of qualification, who experience deskilling by performing low paid and low skilled jobs.
We do not have much information about second generation Latin Americans, either about the interactions between individuals from different migratory waves or regarding the contact among Latin Americans and the broader English society. In this context, this might be an opportunity to look at those ‘spaces’ which have formed across London – such as El Carnaval del Pueblo and others – in which diverse individuals come to interact with the broader and increasingly complex multicultural society.