(i)
Family migration
As shown in the table, nearly half of the participants came through the family migration route, i.e. 14 out of 29. Interestingly, only one person came as a family migrant in the last 5 years (as data was collected in the spring of 2014, these time brackets are calculated from that date); this participant was in her fifties and did not come directly from India. Thus, there was no one in the sample who came directly from India between 2009 and 2014 as a family migrant. This may be due to the more restrictive UK family migration rules that have been in effect at least since 2012, although with such a small sample of people with a ‘comfortable’ middle class background, we should be careful with such assumptions. Six persons came as family migrants in the last 5 to 10 years, while this number dropped to only 2 for the last 11- 20 years, and 5 persons arrived more than 20 years ago. If we look at the age range of these persons, it can be seen that, in general, the time spent in the UK corresponded to an
anticipated age range, with younger participants having resided in the UK for fewer years and older for more years. In particular, those who came to the UK as family migrants 5-10 years ago were in general younger, on average in their thirties (2 persons in their twenties, 3 in their thirties, while 1 in her forties); those who arrived 11 to 20 years ago are in their thirties or forties (1 in each of these age groups); while those who have been residing in the UK for more than 20 years represent the older among the participants with 2 persons in their forties and 3 being over 60. The only person who came as a family migrant in the last 5 years was a more special case, as she did not directly come from India but from Dubai and was in her fifties.
(ii)
Labour migration
Out of the 29, only 4 persons came as labour migrants, although one more participant labelled herself as a labour migrant as she came to work in the UK, but in fact her legal status was that of an EU ‘free mover’ (after having spent a decade in the Netherlands). Most of these 4 persons arrived in the UK in the last 5 years (n=3), while the other person, who was retired, had been living in the UK for more than 20 years. None of the participants
entered the UK as labour migrants between 5 to 20 years ago. This is not surprising, in particular as since the 1970s there has been a significant decrease in the number of work permits issued for migrants, both for skilled or unskilled labourers, which in general reduced labour migration to the UK (Raghuram and Kofman 2002). Nevertheless, such figures were more puzzling for the time bracket between 2000 and 2008, which was the prime time of ‘managed migration’. This was the time when a shift occurred from the former overly restrictive approach to labour migration, and when new immigration policies were put in place to counter the recognised labour market shortages (as described in more detail in section 1.1.8 above). However, we will see under section 3.4.2 below on the interviewees’ labour market sector profiles that those who arrived as family migrants would later enter the labour market and would occupy positions in a wide array of sectors, including health and education where the identified shortages occurred. This latter trend was in line with findings of scholarly research that uncovered permeability of legal statuses and their nexus with the length of time spent in the host country (Kofman 2000; Raghuram 2000). It was also
interesting to note that except for the already retired participant, all interviewees who arrived in the UK as labour migrants came between 2009 and 2014, directly after the unfolding of the financial and economic crisis (from 2008 onwards). This led to a significantly lower intake of labour migrants in nearly all sectors of the economy affected by the crisis; however, as we will see, most of these labour migrants worked in a specific sector, that of the media, that has not been widely discussed in the literature.
(iii)
Student migration
Seven participants out of 29 entered the UK as student migrants. This route of entry is thus the second most widely used by the participants, behind the major route of family migration, and ahead of the labour migration route. It can be said that in general the younger
generations were overrepresented in a sense that 1 student migrant was in her twenties, 4 were in their thirties, 1 in her forties, and 1 in her fifties. The rate of student migrants was evenly distributed across the ‘length of time in the UK’ brackets of the research, with 2 persons having resided in the UK for 0-5 and 5-10 years in each case, 1 person between 11- 20 years and 2 others for more than 20 years. Interestingly, there weren’t any older
participants (60+ years) who entered the UK through this route (as we saw, this age group arrived primarily through family migration or other routes). The widely mediatised recent sharp drop in the enrolment of non-EEA (including Indian) students in British higher education institutions (HESA First Statistical Release 242 (2015-16) Table 9) could not be detected from such numbers. This could be accounted for by the fact that the student interviewees arrived before 2012, and also perhaps by their higher than average socio-
economic backgrounds (for more on international student migration, see King and Raghuram 2013; Raghuram 2013).
(iv)
Other entry routes
A minority of the participants, 4 out of 29, came through entry routes other than family, labour or student migration. Two persons arrived as visitors; however, as they revealed, their main purpose of visit was to escape (potential) domestic abuse. Both of them were more than 60 years old, and they had been residing in the UK for more than 20 years. Another person, who was in her thirties, came under the free movement rules of the EU after having spent a decade in the Netherlands. Finally, as it turned out in the course of the interview, one person already possessed British citizenship when she re-entered the UK later in her life. Although she was born in the UK, her family moved back to India when she was still very young, following which she spent all of her childhood in India. By the time of the interview, this person was in her sixties and had been living in the UK for more than 20 years.