Description
The paper aims to explore narratives of lived experiences and the construction of transnational ties (Faist & Baucöck, 2010) between homeland and host land by Romanians establishing diaspora organisations in the UK. It focuses specifically on their biographies and motivations to engage with the Romanian community in the UK, to establish an organisation and lead it or to join existing organisations in order to serve the Romanian migrants in Britain. The Romanian diaspora in the UK is a rather recent one, emerged after Romania joined the European Union in 2007 and especially after 2014 when Romanians received access to the British labour market; yet it grew quickly to become one of the largest European diasporas in the UK – over 1 million Romanians are estimated to live here (Dolea, 2022) and Romanian is the 3rd most spoken language in England and Wales (ONS Census, 2021). The paper draws on a series of 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Romanian leaders of diaspora organisations carried out between September and November 2023; it shows how belonging to Romania and (more broadly) Eastern Europe is negotiated constantly in relation to the new home, the UK, and how engagement is constructed in narratives of duty, responsibility, care or even guilt.
