About the project
Building on a previous project – Inequalities and Mobilities – Black European Mobilities (BEM) focuses on the experiences of Black and minoritised European migrants in the UK, particularly Italians.
Background
Black European Mobilities explores how migration and cross-border mobility within Europe are shaped by structural inequalities. It challenges dominant narratives of young Europeans as freely mobile, flexible, and cosmopolitan. It foregrounds the experiences of Black and minoritised European migrants in the UK. We focus particularly on Italians.
It builds on a wider project (Inequalities and Mobilities) whose sample included both white and minoritised Italians who migrated to London after the 2008 recession.
Analysis from Inequalities and Mobilities revealed that racialised and minoritised Italians experienced migration in distinct ways. This pointed to specific inequalities and vulnerabilities. Black European Mobilities (BEM) emerged inductively from this initial project. It demonstrates how migration to Britain is also shaped by:
- experiences of racism
- struggles for recognition, and
- beliefs in meritocratic opportunity,
It highlights how race, citizenship, and belonging intersect with mobility across Europe.
The project runs from September 2023 to July 2026 and is funded by the UCL Cities Partnerships Programme and Loughborough University Seed Funding.
Aims
Black European Mobilities explores how minoritised European migrants navigate:
- educational contexts
- citizenship regimes, and
- labour markets.
This is while seeking recognition, stability and belonging across borders.
It particularly focuses on how mobility intersects with race, citizenship and historical legacies of colonialism.
Research questions
- How do young European migrants experience and negotiate mobility in the context of economic insecurity and social inequality?
- How do migrants attempt to build stable lives while navigating transnational mobility?
- How do race, class, and citizenship shape migrants’ social locations and experiences in host societies?
- How do experiences of racism and struggles for recognition influence the mobility of Black and minoritised Europeans?
- How do migrants’ narratives challenge dominant representations of European mobility as fluid, voluntary, and opportunity-driven?
Methodology
The project is grounded in biographical research. It draws on interviews with 26 Black and minoritised Italians who migrated to the UK in the last decade.
Black European Mobilities shares the same topic guide and research approach as Inequalities and Mobilities (which was based on interviews with 51 Italian migrants in London, aged 23–40, from different ethnic backgrounds).
The majority of participants in BEM were aged between their mid-twenties and early thirties (with two in their forties). They were recruited online via social media and snowball sampling. The sample included Italians of Congolese, Ghanaian, Eritrean, Algerian, Moroccan, Egyptian, Afro-Caribbean, Filipino, Caribbean, Libyan, Albanian, Chinese, and Syrian descent.
Only a few had inherited Italian citizenship from their parents. The majority were born in Italy and became naturalised Italian citizens upon turning 18. Most participants held university degrees. Meanwhile, their parents had lower qualifications and were employed in care, construction, hospitality, or factory work.
Interviews traced migration journeys from pre-departure life to:
- settlement experiences
- employment
- social relations, and
- identity.
Participants created “life maps” to visualise key turning points. They narrate their biographies on their own terms. Interviews were conducted in Italian. They were transcribed. Then we analysed them using thematic narrative analysis, combining inductive and deductive coding.
Team
- Michela Franceschelli (Co-I): Michela Franceschelli is an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCL and a mixed-method researcher with experience in visual methodologies, including photography and film documentary. Her research sits within cultural sociology and focuses on migration, youth, and life course transitions, particularly the effects of social inequalities and coloniality on migrants and children of migrants.
- Simone Varriale (Co-I, Black European Mobilities).
- Dr Mauro Giardiello, Associate Professor, Roma-Tre University (Co-I, Inequalities and Mobilities).
Outputs
- Franceschelli, M., 2022. Imagined mobilities and the materiality of migration: The search for ‘anchored lives’ in post-recession Europe. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(3), pp.773–789.
- Franceschelli, M., 2024. Transnational boundaries of distinction: the social locations and subjectivities of Italian migrants in London. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(4), pp.852–873.
- Varriale, S. and Franceschelli, M., 2025. Meritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit Britain. The British Journal of Sociology.
- Franceschelli, M. and Varriale, S. (accepted, forthcoming), Culture of migration and symbolic violence: the racialised mobilities of Black and minoritised Italians, Cultural Sociology.
- Franceschelli, M. and Varriale, S. (forthcoming), The value of citizenship: migration and political agency amongst Black and minoritised Italian migrants in the UK, Citizenship Studies.
Contact us
Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU)
Social Research Institute
UCL Institute of Education
University College London
55–59 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0NU
Image
Michela Franceschelli.