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This paper contributes to the literature on complementary schools as sites of learning and social and cultural identification. We draw on a small-scale multi-method qualitative study conducted in Albanian and Bulgarian community schools in London to explore the agendas of ‘new’ Eastern European complementary schools with respect to learning and heritage and their impact on migrant students’ identities and experiences with education in the UK. Findings demonstrate that different models of complementary schooling and students’ experiences of mainstream education affected students’ views in different ways. The paper explores how the ‘hard’ and ‘boring’ culture of Bulgarian complementary school resulted in students’ expressions of greater liking for learning in mainstream school and valuing of its multiethnic context. It further examines how practices in another complementary school and students’ wider social experiences resulted in a stronger sense of Albanian heritage identity in students, but in more problematic views of UK cultural diversity. In elaborating these themes we seek to draw some implications for policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many respects, recent East European migrants in the UK look like past migrants to the UK: they left poorer parts of the world in search of work and the better life in the UK. But in other respects, they look different: they are white. Their putative whiteness, however, has not exempted them from the effects of racism. But while there is growing evidence of how they have been targets of racism, less attention has been focused on how they are also perpetrators of racism. The purpose of this paper is to compare the ways Hungarians and Romanians wield ‘race’ to assert and defend the relatively privileged position their putative whiteness affords them in the UK's segmented labour market. I argue that these migrants mark, evaluate and rank difference in racialized ways to secure both social-psychological and material benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The share of Old and New Commonwealth migrants in Britain greatly diminished between 1971 and 2002. The decline of former colonial Commonwealth migrants occurred alongside the rise of Central, Eastern European and Middle Eastern migrants. This paper focuses on the chances of social mobility of the previously little-studied new migrant groups and outlines the differences in employment patterns between them and UK-born Whites and old migrants. It establishes that huge differentials exist between new immigrant groups in their labour-market participation, employment rates and occupational attainment. The disadvantage of EU10, Eastern European, Turkish and Middle Eastern migrants in terms of their probabilities of being active, employed and accessing intermediate positions cannot be explained by a lack of human capital, and their situation is not likely to improve with time. For migrant women, inactivity rather than unemployment seems the greatest concern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]