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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. 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.

This thesis adopts a qualitative approach within an interpretive paradigm to explore asylum seekers' and refugees' (ASRs) experiences of social protection in Glasgow. ASRs are more prone to vulnerabilities and require social protection in their host societies. Using 50 semi-structured interviews (30 ASRs and 20 representatives from the state agencies and third sector) along with observation, this research focused on gaining an in-depth understanding of how social protection is experienced on the ground in Glasgow. As in the wider literature, findings showed that there are significant gaps in the provision of social protection for ASRs in Glasgow. While ASRs have been portrayed as passive recipients of services and support, it emerged that ASRs have been actively negotiating and combining different yet distinct forms of social protection - formal (the state and the third sector), informal (social connections) and semi-formal (third sector provision through pubic donations) - to increase their access to overall social protection. This combination denotes the conditions of social protection assemblages. Further, this study emphasises that ASRs are not inherently vulnerable rather they have been vulnerablised by the state's support system. Also evident is the third sector's role in filling gaps caused by a lack of formal support. Findings also identified volunteering as a tool and support-seeking strategy for ASRs, who considered volunteering as a way to engage with their local community, interact and support themselves and others in need. Findings have implications for informing policy and practice. Implications include the Scottish Government and the Glasgow City Council ensuring ASRs' access to formal social protection, empowering ASRs to use available resources, and increasing refugees' access to the labour market. Furthermore, this research contributes to migration and social protection literature by applying the concept of social protection and illustrates the significance and interconnectedness of various forms of social protection.

This multi-stakeholder case study examines experiences and responses to refugee settlement at a city and neighbourhood level in Liverpool, UK. As a site for this research, Liverpool has a unique history, particularly regarding migration, settlement and race relations. Further, the city plays an important role within the administration of the asylum system and the settlement of refugees and asylum seekers in the contemporary era. However, despite the intrinsic value of research within Liverpool, to date, there has been limited research seeking to explore experiences and responses to refugee settlement in the city. Given that this research has a specific focus on the way that refugee settlement plays out at a local level, the study is situated within a ‘local turn’ in migration and refugee studies. There is a strong body of literature that explores the distinct ways migration and settlement play out in different local settings. However, there is limited understanding of refugee settlement as a lived and negotiated dynamic. This research addresses this limitation, adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to examine the lived experience of refugee settlement from multiple perspectives. Employing a combination of methods, including 71 semi-structured interviews, this research explores the way that refugee settlement plays out in a city that is rapidly diversifying. In this regard, the study draws upon the concept of Everyday Multiculture as a way of thinking through both the experience of settlement and the practices employed as a way of learning to live with and negotiate difference. This study contributes to existing writing on multiculture, gaining empirical insight into the quiet tensions that multiculture can obscure. Furthermore, the study points to these tensions not only as hidden by multiculture but as simultaneously fracturing yet informing the practices which underpin it.

Zimbabwean women in Britain have multiple cultural identities and inhabit multiple contested transnational spaces that locate them in contradictory ways. The women then must negotiate these spaces to integrate and function within these spaces. The aim of this thesis is to explore how gender intersects with culture, race, social class, and immigration status in Zimbabwean women’s everyday lives in the diaspora. There is a proliferation of feminist studies on migrant women’s experiences, examining how they negotiate work and family after migration. However, there is limited research on African women diaspora’s gendered experiences and studying them demands African-specific theoretical tools. Current approaches are Eurocentric, use generic theoretical approaches and have viewed the women as passive subjects, formed, and constrained by external forces. This research is a phenomenological study that employs African Feminist Standpoint Theory to explore how the women redefine their cultural identities, and renegotiate their relationships within religious, social, and family spaces. Five group interviews and nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with Zimbabwean women, based in Reading, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Coventry, and Wolverhampton. The study contributes to Gender and Migration studies, by demonstrating how gendered identities are defined and redefined in women’s everyday lives within spaces that have different cultural beliefs on gender and gender relations. Furthermore, the study contributes to African diaspora scholarship and demonstrates the contribution of a colonial legacy on African women in Britain, whose identities, cultures, and economic systems were shaped by colonialism, which reconstitute and reconstruct these identities within spaces of cultural intersection.

In 1989, Bulgaria started its long and complicated process of a post-communist transition. The subsequent economic, social, and political instability, accompanied by a delayed and limited process of decommunisation, shaped a fragmented and polarised narrative about the past. In the context of the lack of official response to this polarisation, several vernacular modes of remembering become more and more significant. Post-communist transition remains an important theme in the new Bulgarian cinema, manifesting the need to discuss and evaluate the legacies of the past. This thesis proposes a multimethod approach to media memory studies, combining textual and contextual film analysis, focus groups with the audience, and interviews with the filmmakers. The thesis begins by evaluating the role of cinema in challenging the East/West binary in the context of the re-evaluation of national identity triggered by the collapse of the communist regime and fuelled further by the accession of Bulgaria to the EU in 2007. The findings show that cinema emerges as a starting point that encourages dialogue about some specific areas of collective memory contestation. The multiplicity of the conflicting interpretations of the communist past is studied through the lens of the co-existence of the discourses of continuity and disruption. Finally, the thesis evaluates the enabling potential of post-communist nostalgia as a critique of the present. It is argued that cinema in Bulgaria emerges as a platform for negotiation encouraging a more nuanced public dialogue about the communist past and the transition.