ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Migration as a Catalyst for Valuesbeen around five to eight thousand Latvians there in 2007, althoughthe numbers have declined in the past few years. 2 Although these figuresshould be treated cautiously in demographic terms, the Latviansnevertheless attribute symbolic power to them.Housing, and thus the meaning of home, is of paramount importanceon the island. Guernsey’s housing law is the fundamental formalvehicle of controlling migration and defining who is an indigenousinhabitant, who has the right to become a local and how, and who isconsidered only a guest and expected to leave. In order to qualify forthe same rights as locals, one has to live on the island for more than 15years. A guest worker basically stays nine months and is stipulated toleave the island for at least three months, although the law has changedduring the past decade and according to sophisticated categorisationsome guests may stay for a period of one to five years on Guernseywithout leaving. The law aims to benefit from migrants, who are economicallyactive and are included in the formal or informal economicsystems, but who are not accepted socially and politically and are discouragedto settle either with their families or because of old age. “Notsuitable for smokers and families with children” reads a typical classifiedadvertisement for rental accommodations in a local paper.26Everyday life in GuernseyIn everyday life, home and housing in Guernsey is organised bya complicated hierarchic division of the local and open market, wherethe former makes up 92% and the latter is approximately 8% of allhousing. The price for rent in the local market is considerably cheaperand often the choice of migrant workers. In practical terms, this meansthat migrants live in either so-called hotels, sharing rooms with upto six and seven other people, or in a single room in a hotel or separaterooms rented from a local person, which is considered a relativeluxury. However, those who live there for a longer period try to get2I did not obtain official numbers in the first phase of my research, whichwas mainly based on qualitative methods. The length of a stay in Guernseyvaries considerably; some migrants come for fixed periods, repeatedlytravelling back and forth, some come for only one to three months.