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Our purpose in this paper is to explore the various types of interrelationship between two mobility forms – migration on the one hand, and visiting friends and relatives ‘back home’ (and maybe elsewhere) on the other. The link between visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and migration has until recently been overlooked by migration scholars. It was essentially the 1990s ‘transnational turn’ in migration studies which highlighted more explicitly the to-and-fro mobilities that migrants engaged in with their homelands. Fast and cheap air travel has facilitated this intense VFR mobility. Taking a wider view, we argue that VFR travel is not a marginal aspect of migrants’ lives but is in fact constitutive of contemporary migration and diaspora dynamics. The first part of the paper maps out a typology of the multiple linkages between VFR travel and international migration; this is a complex task given the variety both of forms of migration and of types of VFR mobility. From this we aim to reconceptualise VFR travel as an essential element of most migration, and to draw out some of the economic and personal power geometries implicated in diverse forms of VFR travel and capability. We then examine three contrasting case-studies of VFR patterns amongst three different migrant groups in the United Kingdom: young Germans who are back-and-forth ‘free movers’ traversing shallow cultural and economic barriers to enjoy what they perceive as an exciting and cosmopolitan life in London; Kosovan refugees whose return visits were initially constrained by their exile status but whose VFR travels have since taken on a touristic aspect; and Latvian labour migrants in Guernsey whose to-and-fro mobility is partly driven by family ties and partly constrained by economic factors and the residence and housing restrictions on this Channel Island.

The study of the integration of the children of migrants, the so-called 'second generation', is a recent trend in migration literature. Their integration is thought to be an important indicator of the degree of integration of immigrants in general into a specific society. This thesis is the first full-length comparative study of the Albanian second generation. Using a variety of field methods, it compares the ethnic identities, transnational ties and integration pathways of Albanian-origin teenagers in three European cities—London, Thessaloniki and Florence—by focusing on intergenerational transmission between the first and the second generation. Greece, Italy and the UK are, in that order, the three main European countries where Albanian migrants have settled during their short but intense migration experience of the past two decades. My study shifts the focus partly to the situation and developments in Southern Europe, where the awareness and interest in issues of the integration of the second generation are still at an initial phase.\ud \ud The research involved fieldwork in each of the above-named cities, where quota samples of three categories of informants were interviewed: parents, their second-generation teenage children, and teachers and other key informants within the host society. Findings show significant differences in the integration patterns of both generations, affected by sharp differences between the three contexts and the history of immigration in each context. They also point to important within- and inter-group differences, based on various socio-economic indicators. Intergenerational transmission appears as a dynamic process affected not only by context and the parents‘ socio-economic background, but also by parents‘ stage of integration. By studying a settling immigrant group and their descendants, the thesis takes a proactive approach towards the integration of ethnic minorities.