Here to Stay

Bulgarian writer and international migration expert Yva Alexandrova tells the story of Eastern Europeans in the UK, and argues that progressive politics needs to be grounded in migrants’ actual experiences and not political expediency.

She shows how attitudes to immigration have changed in the last twenty years in the wake of Brexit and a new wave of nativism that has swept across Britain, and makes a passionate and vivid argument for migrants as full participants in social and political life.

At a time when racism, xenophobia and nationalism dominate politics in the UK and around the world, Here to Stay avoids the usual racist vox-pops and sensationalist political debate and instead tells the stories of the people whose voices rarely feature in debates about immigration: the migrants themselves.Yva Alexandrova is a Bulgarian writer and migration expert. She was Head of Policy and Campaigns for the charity Asylum Aid and an organiser for the People’s Assembly campaign group.