Despite the well-documented benefits of labour migration, much of the discussion before the referendum in the UK argued that it was a bad thing. Now, a few years on, are labour shortages painting a new picture or are migrants forever stigmatised?

Alex Bulat, a Romanian-born councillor on Cambridgeshire County Council, provides a voice from the ground. Bridget Anderson (Bristol University) and Aija Lulle (Loughborough University) join host Maggie Prezyna to talk about fear of migration and why they feel hope for the future of migrants in the UK.

Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this new podcast is Borders & Belonging. Maggie will talk to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.

She and her guests will also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.

Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.

Top researchers contribute articles that complement each podcast with a deeper dive into the themes discussed.

Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.

Upcoming episodes investigate:

Human Smuggling or Human Trafficking? Why the Difference Matters Politicians sometimes talk about human smuggling and trafficking as if they were the same thing. It’s not always because of ignorance: they want to gain support for blocking the flows of all migrants and refugees.

In this episode we hear from Luca Stevenson of European Sex Workers Rights Alliance, who explains that, even with sex workers, we have to look at what drives them to the trade in the first place and recognise that laws to prevent trafficking can cause vulnerable women even more harm. Maggie speaks with Kamala Kempadoo (York University) and Gabriella Sanchez (University of Massachusetts) who argue that we need to look deeper at the systemic injustices behind smuggling, at what drives people to risk everything for a chance of a better life.

Show notes

Below, you will find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.

Art & poetry

Artists Respond To Brexit

Donate or get involved!

the3million

Media

‘An interview with Bridget Anderson’ by Maja Sager, Sociologisk Forskning (2018)

‘Beyond the politics of ‘us’ and ‘them’’ by Bridget Anderson, Social Europe (26 October 2022)

‘Imagining a world without borders’ by Bridget Anderson, TEDxEastEnd (22 September 2011)

‘Towards a new politics of migration with Bridget Anderson’ by Bridget Anderson, McMaster University (9 October 2019)

‘The rights of non-UK EU citizens living here are not a ‘done deal’. This is why’ by Alex Bulat, London School of Economics (27 February 2018)

Books

Anderson, B. (2013). ‘Us and Them?: The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Control’. Oxford University Press.

Lulle, A., Moroşanu, L., & King, R. (2022). ‘Young EU Migrants in London in the Transition to Brexit’. Taylor & Francis.

Koller, V., Kopf, S., & Miglbauer, M. (Eds.). (2019). ‘Discourses of Brexit’. London: Routledge.

Academic works

Anderson, B. (2017). ‘Towards a new politics of migration?’ Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Benson, M., & Lewis, C. (2019). ‘Brexit, British People of Colour in the EU-27 and everyday racism in Britain and Europe’. Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Duffy, B. (2014). ‘Perceptions and reality: Ten things we should know about attitudes to immigration in the UK’. The Political Quarterly.

King, R. (2021). ‘On Europe, immigration and Inequality: Brexit as a ‘wicked problem’’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies.

Lulle, A., King, R., Dvorakova, V., & Szkudlarek, A. (2019). ‘Between disruptions and connections: ‘New’ European Union migrants in the United Kingdom before and after the Brexit’. Population, Space and Place.

Lulle, A., Moroşanu, L. & King, R. (2018) ‘And then came Brexit: Experiences and future plans of young EU migrants in the London region’. Population, Space and Place.

Sumption, M., Forde, C., Alberti, G. & Walsh, P. W. ‘How is the end of free movement affecting the low-wage labour force in the UK?’. The Migration Observatory, University of Oxford.

Wadsworth, J., Dhingra, S., Ottaviano, G. & Van Reenen, J. ‘Brexit and the impact of immigration on the UK’. London School of Economics & Political Science.

Transcript

Maggie Perzyna

Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC migration and openDemocracy. I'm Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University. Today we're going to delve into Brexit, the 2016 referendum vote, where 52% of the voters in the United Kingdom decided the UK should leave the European Union. Many believe concerns about immigration and migration are what drove those results. In this episode, two leading experts will weigh in on the powerful rhetoric and myths about migrants that influenced how Britons voted, and if those views are still held today. But first, we'll speak to someone who has seen firsthand the effects of Brexit on migrant communities in the UK.

Maggie Perzyna

Alexandra Bulat had been living in England for four years when the Brexit referendum happened. After getting over the initial shock of the UK's decision to leave the European Union. She came to the realization that her experience as a Romanian in the UK had been different in so many ways for many of her fellow students.

Alexandra Bulat

What was really interesting for me was how after finding out the result of Brexit, how a lot of my friends who are from Western European countries, so my friends, who were then students from France or Germany, or other countries felt quite shocked by the result, and they were saying, 'Well, you know, is the first time I feel like I'm a migrant in the UK. Like I'm not welcomed, or I'm not wanted in the UK, as a person.' And for me personally, of course, I moved in the UK in 2012, so four years before the referendum and to be honest, I have always felt as a migrant because I did encounter people who had quite negative views about Romanians. It was not as if we were all in this big EU family of everyone loving each other.

Maggie Perzyna

The more Alexandra thought about this discrepancy between how she and her friends felt, the more she realized that there was a difference in the national rhetoric surrounding migrants from different places.

Alexandra Bulat

There was this kind of constructed hierarchy of some migrants from certain countries are less desirable, perhaps than others. You know, like we do prefer, for instance, having the brightest and the best as the rhetoric goes in the government, the brightest and the best migrants coming in the UK and working specific jobs that are associated in kind of popular stereotypes of specific nationalities. Whereas if you mentioned people working in construction, for instance, who are often branded as kind of those lower skilled, lower paid, undesirable migrants you automatically in your mind, think, oh, you know, like, the Polish construction worker or the Romanian construction worker.

Maggie Perzyna

The stereotypes made Alexandra feel uneasy, but in the face of Brexit, what was even more distressing, and imminent, was a question no one could really answer. What will happen to our rights?

Alexandra Bulat

At one point in 2016, in the aftermath of the referendum, no one knew the answer to that question. We just knew there will be a long period of negotiations. We knew that people's rights who were in the UK before Brexit will become bargaining chips in the negotiations and some people didn't even know this. Some people actually wrongly thought they have to leave the UK, or they can't continue their lives in the UK anymore. So, there was a period of uncertainty of deep uncertainty and a period where everyone was quite anxious.

Maggie Perzyna

Even though she was worried. Alexandra also knew that she was lucky compared to many other EU migrants.

Alexandra Bulat

I was living in Cambridge, I was connected to a university, I was fluent in English, I had a lot of privilege that a lot of people you know, that I interacted with, didn't necessarily have access to same information. Our university informed us about Brexit updates and so on. So, my first thing was to be how can I inform people around me who don't have the same access to information?

Maggie Perzyna

First thing she did was sign up to volunteer with the3million, a grassroots organization created to protect the rights of people who have made the UK their home. The more she worked as an activist, the more Alexandra realized that all the issues really boiled down to one thing - power - and that motivated her to keep going

Alexandra Bulat

I think that's kind of what I was really focused on. What really made me passionate about activism is actually that information is power. And if you don't have information about your rights and you don't have accurate information about your rights in the UK, you're more likely to end up in exploitative conditions at work, you're more likely to be taken advantage of, you're more likely to end up in very precarious circumstances.

Maggie Perzyna

Throughout the course of our volunteer work. Alexander also realized just how deeply many families would be affected by Brexit, especially families that didn't have enough access to information about the EU settlement scheme.

Alexandra Bulat

It will always remember this example of this, Romanian woman who came to an information stall I was volunteering at in in Cambridge where I lived. It was before the pandemic. And then I asked her who okay, you applied for status. She applied for the status, she got the status.

Maggie Perzyna

Then she asked the woman if she had children. The woman said yes, so Alexandra asked if her children had applied for status. The woman looked extremely confused.

Alexandra Bulat

There was this miss-assumption amongst many people I met that they're my children, the state knows, so they will automatically get the status. But in reality, there's a really stressful situation to come across this because this meant that if this child, then they grew up, they're 16. They start their first job in summer, and then they will be asked, please prove your rights to work or immigration status and then they can find out often after many years in the country, that they are actually unlawful or unlawfully resident in the UK and then effectively lose all their rights, the rights to rent, the right to work, the right to health care. So, it is yeah, it is really, really worrying to think how many people are still in that circumstance.

Maggie Perzyna

In May 2021 Aleksandra Boulet was elected as labor counselor representing Abby on Cambridgeshire County Council, where she continued to bring her lived experience and passion for migrants’ rights to her work. Our thanks to Alexandra for bringing her perspective from the field.

Maggie Perzyna

To discuss the tangled issues around Brexit and migration, I have Professor Bridget Anderson, director of the Bristol Institute on Migration and Mobility Studies at the University of Bristol and Professor Aija Lulle, senior lecturer in Human Geography, Loughborough University. Thank you both for joining me.

Maggie Perzyna

Migration was a point of tension between the UK in the EU for some time before Brexit. How did migration factor into the British leave campaign and what fueled the swell of anti-migration rhetoric in Britain?

Bridget Anderson

When we're thinking about how migration plays in Britain, and I think particularly in England, I think that we do always have to think about race and how migrants are racialized and how migration and nationality can be in some ways, a coded way of talking about race. So, I think that in the Leave campaign, in a way, there were two kinds of aspects of it. So, one was a kind of fantasy of Britain, its past glories, the British Empire, Britain ruling the world, you know, and you know, and but now "we" (we in inverted commas) were part of the EU and a kind of sideline power. And the other was related, which has kind of obviously, heavily racist implications. And then on the other hand, there was also this idea that they were basically too many migrants coming to Britain, and that, that needed to be stopped in some way. And the, again (in inverted scare quotes), "we" needed to get control back of our borders. And those were both elements of those, which in some ways you could say were contradictory. Were played on very heavily by the Leave campaign.

Aija Lulle

Yes, yeah. I can just say how Bridget just said. Definitely we need to talk about racialization. During the Leave campaign, and we need to talk about that migration was made - specifically made - as a fundamental issue during the Leave campaign. Precisely with these phrases and tropes that Britain is full, that Britain is like a container that is full and overflowing and getting our control back to our borders. And specifically, I want to say, that I myself, I was born still during the Soviet Union times, and I did not choose where I was born, and I did not choose to be born in a totalitarian country that did not allow any migration. I really felt that our research participants they experienced this racialization towards Eastern European migrants.

Maggie Perzyna

Professor Anderson, you write a lot in your research about the fact that the preoccupation with migration during Brexit is really about global inequality. How do these tie together?

Bridget Anderson

So, I suppose I think, that it's as I mentioned, I think that there is this sense of Britain becoming you know, as once ruling the world and becoming more marginalized. And I think that is something that is experienced by people in Britain as they see their lives getting tougher, and their incomes declining. And the welfare state which let's not forget was also kind of a product that was financed by imperialism, even though it's imagined as a kind of national achievement. But I think there is this kind of sense of decline and increasing impoverishment. And I think that there is a sense in the UK of there basically being not enough to go around. And as you feel like, you know, a sense of well, I'm in a relatively rich country, and yet I'm barely making do and I look out at the rest of the world and say, hey, there's a lot of people who are a hell of a lot worse off than I am. And so, I need to hold on to this, to the little that I have. And I think that anxiety, which was deliberately fueled by the vote Leave by the different vote Leave campaigns. And I think it is a component in fear of migration. So, I think rather than looking out at the world and seeing what the challenges that people might have in common and seeing the kind of ever greater and increasing inequality between the super-rich and the getting by, as something which should, you know, encourage allegiances and alliances with migrants, it was actually used to divide British citizens from migrants.

Bridget Anderson

Professor Lulle, you refer to 'invisible migrants' made visible after Brexit in your research. What do you mean by that and what is life like for migrants after Brexit?

Aija Lulle

We are talking here about cultural racialization and ethnicization because during the Brexit campaign, we really saw the evidence that specific ethnicities were highlighted, especially Romanians, as 'Others' and as not quite white, but also it went towards the Polish people and Others. So seemingly European migrants they could blend into being British quite invisible as being white but then through this Brexit campaign, they were made as - they were racialized - and they were made visible through this cultural racialization campaign, essentially.

Maggie Perzyna

After Brexit, after the referendum, how does the situation look today?

Aija Lulle

After the referendum, actually, for many people and those young European migrants we interviewed, the Brexit vote was a surprise. It wasn't a surprise for some, but many were surprised because they were sheltered in their communities, or very international environment because we interviewed people in London and metropolitan area. There were many, or most had international universities, or even cafes, or working in the construction business [all of which] are very international, and they did not think that it [Brexit] will happen. And then suddenly, overnight, the situation changed. It's important that many of our research participants, they said that prior to Brexit, they were not worried. But their racialized colleagues were worried. They were really anxious to work through the paperwork because they felt this Brexit decision will affect them seriously. So, it really underlines this argument that Brexit is about race and racialization. So, the situation changed for people a lot because they had to garner all kinds of paperwork to prove that you can live in the UK, and so many people have families across the border. So, it was a dramatic change.

Bridget Anderson

One thing I'd like to kind of put on the table, is of course, who are we talking about when we're talking about migrants, right? I mean, are we talking about people who are subject to immigration controls, or are we talking about racialized people? And I think, you know, when we're talking about migrants, there's lots of US bankers working in London who are migrants. And yet I think that's not who we're imagining when we're thinking about Brexit, migration, and people's experiences. So, I think that you know, thinking about that kind of more narrow group of migrants, which is basically thinking about people of color and people of working-class people, I would say that firstly, post Brexit and this kind of gets back to what we were both saying at the start off that there was a vicious rise in racist attacks. And those racist attacks were directed both at people who are perceived as being from Eastern Europe, so called and people of color. So that, to me demonstrates, firstly, that yes, people from other EU member states were being racialized as not properly white, but also that this is a question of race. And then in terms of kind of what happened to actual migration actually, also, you know, people have been both leaving and also kind of not coming from Europe. And that's had significant consequences for the British labor market. I mean, we're in the middle of an absolute disaster, in terms of airports and flights. And I was listening to kind of some airport representative issue a plea to the government to allow for work permits for baggage handlers, because the baggage handlers were all from European countries. And now there are no people to work in baggage handling. So, it's also the negative experiences of Brexit for migrant workers are also now having negative consequences for migrants and citizens alike who are still residing in the UK.

Aija Lulle

I can follow up a little bit on this question. Well everyday life after Brexit, bureaucracy very much kicked in after Brexit. And all people, they became subject to all kinds of rules related to time. How long have you been living in the UK? And most importantly they were subjects to mobility rule - what we as researchers call 'mobility justice.' So, you really have to count every day, every trip outside to qualify for permanent status and then to qualify for citizenship. And yes, indeed, many migrants have entered this role, and they applied for citizenship, and permanent status. And I'm following up and keeping in touch with my research participants. I recently had a conversation and the person said that yes, they went for this citizenship option and paid lots of money, but now they feel "was it really worth it"? They could have lived maybe as permanent residents and not to have this British passport. Then others who had more precarious situations they have their own private Brexits because they are subject to quite strict bureaucratic rules.

Maggie Perzyna

So, 'take back control', 'British jobs for British citizens'. These are some of the slogans around the Brexit Leave campaign. Did Brexit solve the issues it was supposed to?

Bridget Anderson

Well, I suppose the question of was there issues in the first place? And then did it solve it? So, I think that, you know, there was tremendous anxiety around Brexit and again, I think this was largely brought up, about migrants taking so-called British jobs. Now, as we know, there's not a set number of jobs to go around the economy. You know, it's not simply you can't say that one person takes another's job in that kind of simplistic way. But what's noticeable is that whereas ten years ago, there's some research which found that one in four people, that's right, in 2008, one in four people thought that migrants would contribute to kind of turning the economy round and two in four thought that migrants were taking jobs from British workers. Now we're finding those figures reverse that is only a quarter of people think people are taking jobs and half are saying that we need migrants for the economy. So, I think, what we've seen is that you know, it's really not the case that British workers will just walk into the jobs that migrants used to do. And having said that, I think it's also important to say this is not because, as many employers will you know, will argue that British people are too lazy. They don't have the right work ethic. Which is why we need migrant workers. No, it's for lots of complicated reasons, including the fact that British people have families in the UK. That they're looking at their entire career trajectory. There's just very different circumstances, and they imagine themselves very differently in the labor market. So, I want to say that, you know, it's not that British people are too lazy or that migrants are naturally hardworking. Actually, what we're seeing is labor shortages across the board in many so-called migrant sectors.

Aija Lulle

These so-called issues were very much fabricated during the Brexit campaign. So, I could give some examples of so-called issues. Yes, taking jobs, as Bridget said. Another issue that was often mentioned was that migrants are using our welfare system, and also another issue was about NHS [National Health Service]. So, from our research, robust quantitative data, larger research we did, you can see that actually, migrants under use the welfare system and don't claim benefits that they are entitled to, and they definitely underuse the NHS. So, in that sense clearly fabricated issues that did not correspond to reality.

Maggie Perzyna

Professor Lulle, your colleague Russell King says that Brexit is a wicked problem, which is an unsolvable problem, that in the end only causes more problems. Do you think that's true?

Aija Lulle

It's an interesting notion. I think it is generative and productive to some extent. But I was looking also at the history of migration politics in the UK, and we can see that it comes in waves, and it also breaks in waves. And we can see the correlation with the Conservative government. So, we saw in the 40s, after the Second World War, you can see that Commonwealth countries, invited - people invited to come to the UK - Irish then coming in the 40s and 70s and then, in 1971, we got the Immigration Act, and voila, we also had the Conservative government right, and the Commonwealth people were stripped off of some of their privileges given previously. And then we saw joining Common Market European Common Market in 1973 and British people enjoyed being part of Europe, in terms of migration, they enjoyed living or having transnational lives across the borders. And since the Common Market was much smaller, it kind of included Western European countries, so we also need to talk about racism and racialization. Also, in Europe not only in the UK. So, it was relatively hush-hush nice combination that we can live in Europe. And you can come to UK. But the problems started of the racialization and ethnicization, with a large-scale influx of Eastern European migrants. Later, after the 2004.

Maggie Perzyna

Professor Anderson, what do you think? Do you think that Brexit is a wicked problem?

Bridget Anderson

I think that Brexit is a wicked problem. Yes. Because I think that it's symptomatic of many other problems. So, I think it's symptomatic of a deep-seated problem of English nationalism, and the relation of England to the United Kingdom and sort of English self-perceptions. I think it's a problem related to Empire and imperial nostalgia and the ways that Britain sees its role in the world. I think it's a problem related to industrial decline, and actually politics that really kind of go back to the 1980s and a sense of alienation and confusion and resentment. So, I think that yes, it is a wicked problem. And I think in turn, it creates its own problems, but it is a wicked problem. And it's a symptom of many other issues, but particularly, I would say around economic questions and questions of race and racism.

Maggie Perzyna

So, Britain's exit from the EU was finalized in 2020. Looking to the future of migration and Britain, what do you feel hopeful or inspired by?

Aija Lulle

I actually have like big hope, and let's say quite immediate hope. And let me start with short-term hope. I do hope that Britain and British people will reflect on the industry of hate and divisiveness which was created during the Brexit campaign in very intense way. And that they may do it together with colleagues and friends across the ocean in the US because all this coincided also with electing Donald Trump. So, self-awareness and critical reflection. I think is very serious and important to move forward. And I have a large hope because I teach intensely in my university. And I teach one module, for example, about post-colonial and post-socialist societies, and I was very delighted to be in my classes. I was very happy to be back because I really saw that my students are listening, they are engaged. They stay after the class, they want to discuss more, they want to see the similarities and differences. They want to see their role as a reflective person's soon entering into the sort of, big world, after the university. And also, I do see that we have more global universal problems to deal with, like climate change, and the biggest call does come from the younger generation. And I think that our younger generation will come together and will see the value of togetherness and the value of each other and that we are all interconnected. And this will be the ethos of how they can approach these questions.

Bridget Anderson

One thing I feel both hopeful and inspired by is the bringing together, particularly in migrants’ organizations, of questions of race and migration. So, these have been they used to be very kind of interconnected in the 70s and 80s. They moved apart really from the 90s onwards, and now I think they're now kind of getting back into conversation with each other. And I think that's really - more than conversation into organizing with each other - and I think that's really important. I can also see to the areas of hope that are also challenges. So, one hope and challenge is the preparedness to have difficult conversations. I think that Brexit really trained us for that, and we've only just begun. And I think that we need to be able to have more of these difficult conversations where we are able not to shout at each other but to genuinely dialogue and learn from very different points of view and ways of being in the world. And relatedly, I think the politics of what you could call the politics of hinterlands that is politics outside the city. I think that there's been a kind of tremendous fixation on cities. And this is not just in the UK. I think sort of more generally. I think that there is a lot to be learned from and to think about by engaging with the politics of outside the cities, whether that's small towns or rural areas. So, I see those both as offering exciting possibilities as being challenges but also in the end offering hope.

Maggie Perzyna

Well, I think that's a wonderful place to finish that leaves us something all to think about.

Aija Lulle

Thank you.

Bridget Anderson

Thank you very much.

Maggie Perzyna

Thanks to Professor Anderson and Professor Lulle for joining me today. And thank you for listening. This is a CERC Migration and openDemocracy podcast produced in collaboration with Lead Podcasting. If you enjoyed the episode, subscribe to Borders & Belonging on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more information on Brexit, please visit the show notes. I'm Maggie Perzyna. Thanks for listening!