Leamington : a multicultural town 

"The town is diffuse and divided, but not in ways that are deep or bitter; yet the parts tend to come together over time and they share a discernible pride in the place. In this club, for example, it says Cead Mile Failte in large letters over the stage, but I haven't heard an Irish accent, let alone any Gaelic. Although the people look Irish and have parents or grandparents mainly from Cork they tell stories about visits to Ireland as if it were an exotic other, just as the Punjabis who are 20% of the town talk about India and the Sicilians talk about Italy. If we took demography seriously those notices would not say that we were twinned with Bruhl and Sceaux, but with Cork, Cimino and Amritsar. The Punjabis and Corkonians came mainly for the Ford foundry which now lies derelict at the other end of town, the Ciminese to run restaurants and hairdressers. The Poles came as refugees and in such numbers after 1939 that the old town hall became the Polish Club. There are now many Portuguese whose original focus of employment was the services on the M40"  via The social affairs unit 


'Portugal has a longer history of migration to the UK. Portuguese migrant
workers have been a substantial group in the UK labour market: one wave of
migration occurred in the mid-1970s and continued when the country joined the
European community in 1986. According to Rutter (2006), a more recent migration
wave started after 2000. Despite the lack of reliable data and official figures, one
study has estimated the number of Portuguese migrants in the UK to be at around
300,000 people (British Educational Research Association, 2008). The
geographical distribution of Portuguese migrants has become more fluid in recent
years. ' via policy studies institute