Gordon Brown's rallying cry at the 2008 Labour conference of "British jobs for British people" proved emotive. It was taken up by unions and local communities across the UK. But as the recession has deepened, G20 calls for the regulation of global capital have been more vocal than debate about regulating the mobility of international labour.
The first of May marks the fifth anniversary of the admission of eight new countries into the EU. Government forecasts originally predicted this might generate a small annual increase in net migration into Britain of 10,000 to 15,000. In the event, more than 500,000 from Poland alone came to the UK. For many, this amounted to the most important policy decision of the last decade because it so dramatically transformed the size and composition of the UK population. So what, if any, lessons have been learned and how does Britain face up to the situation it finds itself in?
Some think the recession will reverse migrant flows and that, as jobs in the UK dry up, many newcomers will go home. But the impact of the downturn has been more severe in eastern Europe, which does not suggest that there are greater opportunities awaiting migrant workers if they do return. Past experience, not always a reliable guide to the future, suggests migrant populations across Europe stay long term.
The role of the labour market in recovery from recession is crucial – and migration is a crucial part of the labour market. As this week's report from the migration advisory committee points out, some skill shortages can remain even during times of recession, but as the overall unemployment numbers worsen, sensitivities on migration are likely to sharpen. It was hoped that the new points system would take some of the heat from such discussion, that the objectivity of economic rationality would provide a rhetorical refuge from some contested ethical dilemmas. But it is not the fault of economic analysis that the welfare externalities of labour movement cannot always calculate the social costs of community building.
We do know that while the economic benefits of migration accrue nationally and regionally, social costs are realised locally, in terms of pinch points in schools, healthcare and rapid change in small neighbourhoods. But most migrants arrive already schooled and skilled; the costs of childcare, education and training having been paid for. It is also the case that 43% of A8 migrants (from the EU accession countries in the 2004 expansion) are 18 to 24, and in the most recent Labour Force Survey among those arriving between 1997 and 2007, about four-fifths were between 16 and 40 – and therefore less likely to be heavy users of health and education services.
But local authority subsidies for services are allocated on a capitation basis that depends on accurate calculation of population numbers. The ability to manage such calculation is weak.
Councils in Slough and across London have long argued that existing methodologies do not reflect current trends. Public purse pressures will affect councils' capacity to address needs, not least if the Treasury displaces the financial squeeze from a national to a local level. We also need to address the tension between equalities legislation that was shaped by the race relations debates of the 1960s and contemporary realities, understanding that moments of communal confrontation are juxtaposed by the multicultural conviviality that characterises much of Britain today.
We have already seen in 2009 that local disputes can escalate rapidly into national controversy. The week-long strike at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire during February challenged the employment rights of Italian subcontractors; subsequent clashes flared around potential employment of migrant labour at power plants in Staythorpe and the Isle of Grain. In such situations the search for a language that recognises the concerns of the most vulnerable in increasingly precarious labour markets without descending to chauvinism demands a sophisticated analysis of the costs and benefits of migration in the context of flexible labour markets.
The economic and social factors that will trigger the recovery may in turn demand a defence of migration policy, understanding the eithical legacies of the colonial past and the labour market rationalities of the European present. Any such consideration requires both high quality research and an open and honest debate about a difficult subject. Otherwise the field is left to the half-truths and shibboleths of the British National Party to set the tone for the June elections. That is an outcome that few should welcome.
