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Immigrants who plan to come to the UK can be divided into two main groups: those from the European Economic Area (EEA) – that includes all countries from the European Union, Iceland, Lichtenstein and Norway – and those who are from outside the EEA. The first group can enter the UK on a valid passport or a national identity card. The latter needs a valid passport, and some may also need a visa, depending on their country of origin and the length of time one intends to stay in the UK, i.e. whether it is 6 months or less, or more than 6 months (gov.uk n.a. 2015). The migration grounds for entry defined by the UK Government (ibid.) when verifying whether one needs a UK visa are based on, apart from the country one is from, what one intends to do in the UK. Immigrants may come to the UK for tourism, including visiting friends and family, even though their ‘real’ reasons may be to settle in the UK. They might come to work or study. They can apply for a visa when joining their partner or family for a long stay, getting married, visiting their child at school, getting private medical treatment or coming for official diplomatic or government business (gov.uk).

When people from outside the EEA apply for a work visa, the main groups entitled to enter the UK are skilled workers who have been offered a skilled job in the UK, or those who have obtained a job in the UK in the overseas branch of a company one worked for in their country of residence. Those who want to come to work in the UK for a short period can apply for a visa for temporary workers, for example, in sports, the arts, entertainment or as a volunteer. Domestic workers in private households can also apply for a visa (gov.uk). The main Latin American migrants’ ‘legal grounds for entry’ (Blinder 2016: 2) to the UK are those of work, study, family and asylum. Only when these categories are not treated as “migration reasons”, but as diverse “legal grounds for entry” (ibid.: 2), and then “EEA/ Swiss nationality” is rationally treated as another category (ibid.: 2). And so, many Latin Americans who have come to the UK and live in Edinburgh hold EEA nationality and have used their EEA passport to come to the UK. Those Latin Americans who hold EEA/Swiss passports have come either directly from Latin America, or from other European countries to the UK on European passports and so this has been their “legal ground for entry”. Those Latin Americans who needed to

apply for visas before coming to Edinburgh came as temporary workers i.e. dance instructors and music DJs. Also, various types of artists from Latin America e.g. actors, dancers, musicians and painters come to Edinburgh because of the Fringe Festival and other festivals taking place annually in Edinburgh. The other group consists of those who have moved to Edinburgh due to being offered a skilled job in the city in a new company or in an overseas branch in Edinburgh of the same company they worked for in their ‘home countries’ in Latin America (or in a previous place of residence) and obtained “a skilled workers visa”. During my fieldwork I met Latin Americans who came to work in Edinburgh after having obtained the aforementioned work visa as: biomedical specialists, energy sector workers (renewable energy sources such as wave, tidal and wind sectors, as well as those working in traditional energy, in areas such as oil and gas development, consultancy and exploration18), and researchers working at universities and for research organisations.

There are more and more students from Latin America applying for student visas and coming to study in Edinburgh. Among these, some students later on decide to stay in Edinburgh. Edinburgh Universities have established partnerships and business links with various Latin American Universities. The University of Edinburgh has established a partnership with, for instance, UNAM (Mexico), Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) and Universidad de Chile, as well as with various companies. The University of Edinburgh co-operates with Brazil’s national energy company, Petrobras, and BG Group to “improve methods of extracting oil from carbonate reservoirs in offshore fields” (The University of Edinburgh 2013 n.a.). What is more, the University of Edinburgh opened its ‘Office of the Americas’ in São Paulo, Brazil in 2013 (ibid.). According to HESA,19 most students in Edinburgh come from Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Brazil, however there are also a few students from Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Having contacted four Edinburgh Universities, namely Heriot Watt University, Napier University, Queen Margaret University and the University of Edinburgh and enquired

18 _{There are more than 2,000 energy-related companies in Scotland, putting Scotland at the forefront of}

the world’s energies market (scotland.org). Many companies have their headquarters and consultancy offices in Edinburgh, with the offshore oil and gas companies mostly located in Aberdeen.

about their Latin American students and the type of studies and courses they take on, I noticed that most students come to Edinburgh for postgraduate studies. The majority of Latin American students do either PhD or Masters courses in Science and Engineering, followed by Humanities and the Social Sciences, ending with a few students studying Medicine and Veterinary Medicine. For instance, at Heriot Watt University, the majority of Latin American students are enrolled in the Institute of Petroleum Engineering (IPE) and the School of Management and Languages (SML).

Students who have obtained governmental scholarships to study in Edinburgh and who would like to stay in the UK after they have finished their studies have to go back to their home country and work there for at least 6 months, depending on the terms and conditions of their grant, so that they don’t need to re-pay the whole scholarship, and then they are free to seek a skilled job in the UK, and once they have found it some go back to Edinburgh. Very often, it is through the networks students have established while studying in Edinburgh that they acquire employment. Some Latin American students find work as researchers, lecturers and workers in laboratories at the university where they studied. Others find employment outside academia as highly qualified specialists in one of the six aforementioned developed sectors in Edinburgh.

There are also many Latin Americans in Edinburgh whose partners are from the UK or from other European countries and have come to Edinburgh on various types of family visas, such as a spouse or partner visa. The people I spoke with either met in Scotland when a person from Latin America came to study English or to study at university, or in other cases visited their friends and relatives, or in some cases arrived as tourists in Edinburgh. Others met in Latin America while their partner – from the UK or another EU country – was working, visiting his or her friends, or travelling. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, most asylum seekers and refugees from Latin America came to the UK when oppressed by military governments in the 1960s and 70s, and during armed conflicts in the 1980s and 1990s. While I was writing my thesis, more Venezuelan asylum seekers started coming to the UK due to the current unstable situation in Venezuela.

enter the UK and be entitled to civil rights, depending – in cases where one originates from outside the EEA – on the type of visa, or – in the case of EEA citizens – on their EEA passport. There is also a substantial number of ‘irregular status’ Latin Americans20 in Edinburgh who have come to the UK without valid documents, who possess fake documents or who have overstayed their permitted time in the country. The term ‘irregular’ refers to people entering or remaining in a country without “authority to do so and are potentially open to being deported as a result” (McIlwaine 2009 in McIlwaine, Cock, and Linneker 2010: 14). This term, contrary to the terms ‘undocumented’ or ‘illegal’, does not have such a strong connotation of perceiving migrants as criminals, and it prevents “confusions over whether being undocumented means not having legally correct papers or not being officially recorded by the receiving country” (ibid.: 14). As such, I would classify immigrants with “irregular status” as merely pertaining to another “immigration status” category, as opposed to having their underlying reasons for migration revealed by this title.