Dr. Cathy Mcllwaine, lead of the study published by Queen Mary in May 2011: ‘No longer invisible’ talks about the Latin American community in UK and the effects of the study in political and social programmes for the community.
‘No longer invisible’ published the first official figures of how many Latin Americans currently reside in the UK which is 186,500 people. This number also included second-generation Latin Americans who identify themselves as ‘British Latinos’.
Cathy Mcllwaine. Source: Cathy Mcllwaine
Q: Why did you choose to study the Latin-American population as a whole?
A: “At the one hand there’s some sort of sense of being Latin American in London, people would say: ‘Soy Latino’, but at the same time, there’s a lot of divisions amongst the different nationality groups.
However, there is a developing conscience about being Latin American that wasn’t present when I started working in 2003- 2004.
Also, Latin Americans are an ethnic group in the eyes of the British estate. The argument is that it’s a group of people that come from the same part of the world. It’s not ethnicity in terms of race. We will see the ethnicity being created in the next ten years”.
Q: In some sites like Wikipedia you get numbers of Latin Americans in UK of up to 1.000.000. Do you know where they have come from?
A: “A Peruvian oral historian, Sofia Buchuck suggested that the Latin American community in UK was a population of between 500.000 and 1.000.000 on her website and the Foreign and Commonwealth office published it as a semi-official number. I used it until I realised where it came from.
In terms of the research we did, we used the figures that were available and we developed the numbers in a robust way. We’re not saying it’s completely accurate because it’s so difficult. The statistics that are available in this country are not very good at all because we count people coming in but we don’t count people coming out. The international passenger survey uses nationality so you have Spanish people coming in and they’re really Latin Americans. We’re hoping that the new census will help. But then there are many people that don’t fill the census in. If you’re not here permanently you‘re not necessarily going to fill the census in and that seems to be the only way you can get roughly any figures so the Border Agency’s data really is not very good at all”.
Q: In what stage are conversations with government organisations to put the projects that you suggest in your research in action?
A: Latin American Women’s rights Service has employed a representative to lobby for Latin American communities in the boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth so that the government can take on board the South American case.
Trust for London contacted Citizen Advice Bureau to encourage them to increase their translation to Spanish and Portuguese services.
I have tried to contact Latin American’s Women’s Advice Bureau to keep following up their progress but they haven’t got back to me yet.
Q: Do you perceive a lack of interest from the British Society in Latin American culture?
A: “People are actually interested but they are fed a Latin America that is not real. Latin America is a very sophisticated society. It has big cities, industry and universities. People in Europe think that there are only villages with huts. The big cities in Latin America are so cultured. In Europe people have this image of Speedy Gonzalez and salsa which is also provoked by US media which is what we get over here”.
‘No longer invisible‘ was published in May 2011 and was funded by Trust for London and Latin American Women’s Rights service. To read the full report, please go to this link.
You can also listen to other subjects from the discussion by playing this track below: