Motivational accounts of recent Italian and Spanish emigrants to Germany and the United Kingdom

There is an emerging body of literature on the recent increase in mobility from Southern to Northern European countries with a specific focus on the period since the 2008 global economic crisis. Much of the public debate and some of the academic literature on the subject has been quick to establish causal links between record levels of youth unemployment and the increased emigration flows. Moreover, popular portrayals of young and high-educated Italian and Spanish individuals being ‘forced’ to flee their countries have contributed to building a collective image of the ‘typical’ crisis era Southern European migrant. However, the ‘crisis narrative’ may be obscuring other factors related to individual agency, personality and biographical specifics as well as individuals’ perceptions of both economic and non-economic structural factors when explaining their cross-national mobility decisions. Whereas most of the literature on the topic is based on surveys, our research draws on qualitative data derived from a project funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme “Growth, Equal Opportunities, Migration and Markets” (GEMM). The paper is based on in-depth interviews with a total of 161 people. More precisely, we conducted 82 interviews with Italians and Spaniards living in Germany and the UK. Over half of the emigrant sample is between the ages of 18 and 35 years, most of whom emigrated during the 2010s and a majority of which are employed in high-skill sectors. In addition, we conducted 19 interviews with prospective Italian and Spanish migrants who reside in their home country and plan to migrate within 12 months. Finally, we carried out 20 interviews with recruitment agency and employment services representatives in Italy and Spain. Qualitative interviews with two different categories of emigrant – actual migrants and prospective migrants - allows us to investigate in depth their motivations for and social representations of emigration. This paper seeks to make a contribution both to the literature on South-North EU mobility and to research on motivations for international migration more broadly. We follow Mills’ (1940) model of situated actions and vocabularies of motive by considering motives less as reasons for action or descriptions of social experience and more as fluid constructions and interpretations of past, present and future actions. Without underestimating the significance of economic factors, we problematize the image of the ‘typical’ Southern European crisis migrant as primarily economically driven with limited individual agency and demonstrate the uses of multiple migration motives. Initial results of our analysis show a strong sense of individual agency among South European migrants. In addition, respondents in our study rarely offer accounts of narrowly defined economic considerations such as financial problems or unemployment as the primary motive for migration; instead, they develop multidimensional cultural, societal, political, personal as well as broader economic narratives. Finally, through cross-national comparative analysis of Southern Europeans’ motivations for moving from two different countries of origin with similar migration histories, our paper aims to evaluate whether national structural characteristics may influence their decisions and/or shape their accounts.