‘High-Skilled Good, Low-Skilled Bad?’ British, Polish and Romanian Attitudes Towards Low-Skilled EU Migration

Abstract

A new skills-based immigration system, with a preference for the highly-skilled, is central to UK policy debates in the Brexit context, arguably responding to majority public opinion on migration. Through qualitative fieldwork with British, Polish and Romanian citizens living in two local authorities in England, this paper shows what participants understand by ‘low-skilled’ and how there is broad support of those who ‘contribute’, but are ‘controlled’ at the same time. Migrants’ narratives of downskilling also illustrate why the category of ‘low-skilled’ migration needs to be seen through a more critical lens in research and policymaking.

Voting with your feet or voting for Brexit: The tale of those stuck behind

“…Migration issues (in terms of the culture and values they embody) have primacy in the Brexit discourse. They are often cited to support anti‐immigrant and xenophobic attitudes, nationalism or populism that are associated with the pro‐Brexit vote (Bulat, 2019; Inglehart & Norris, 2016; Rzepnikowska, 2019). The migration question also interacts with different migration patterns of female workers both in comparison with male and between high and low skilled female workers (Bailey & Mulder, 2017; Shutes & Walker, 2018).…”

‘One improves here every day’: the occupational and learning journeys of ‘lower-skilled’ European migrants in the London region

“…Nonetheless, they sound a more general call for expanding notions of 'worthy lives' beyond the 'top half of the income ladder', as Lamont suggests (2018, 432), which is important, given 'low-skilled' migrants' profound and widespread devaluation. Intentions to privilege high-earning 'skilled' migrants in Britain's post-Brexit immigration system are a recent reminder of this devaluation, and enduring skill hierarchies (Bulat 2019). Hagan, Demonsant, and Chávez (2014) criticise similar preferences in US immigration policies, which fail to acknowledge many migrants' abilities and contributions.…”

“…Yet, as Hagan, Lowe, and Quingla (2011) point out, such processes of skills development and occupational advancement are often obscured, or typically related to ethnic resources and entrepreneurship, where addressed (see Portes 1998). In the UK too, several studies showed how migrants working in hospitality, domestic or other low-paid sectors could approach their jobs strategically to pursue other (non-economic) aims, develop skills to secure 'good jobs' abroad or at home, and abandon, rather than tolerate, unfavourable conditions (Williams and Baláž 2005;Alberti 2014;Parutis 2014;Bulat 2019). However, the European migrants sampled there are often from specific, usually East European, countries, working in specific sectors, and/or equipped with varying education levels, including university.…”

“…Rather than being an 'elite' practice and done in specific environments, learning is, Williams (2006) argues, an ongoing process, which occurs across multiple domains of activity and types of migrants. Migrants can thus move from lower-to higher-skilled jobs over time (Bulat 2019). Hagan, Hernández-León, and Demonsant (2015) likewise indicate that migrants gain skills in diverse settings beyond work or schooling throughout the life course, yet the difficulty to measure them means they are omitted from many analyses of migrants' occupational mobility, in favour of traditional human capital indicators, notably years of education.…”

‘We are still quite patchy about what we know’ International migration and the challenges of definition, categorisation and measurement on local service provision

“…The lack of clarity, and transparency, in terms of who counts as a 'migrant' results in uncertainty in operationalisation, measurement and analysis and, therefore, the subsequent evidence, its interpretation and the conception of migration the data represents (Anderson and Blinder, 2017;Mateos et al, 2009;Raymer et al, 2019). This has implications as the term 'migrant' is used interchangeably and uncritically in political and public immigration discourses conflating issues of immigration, race, ethnicity, citizenship and asylum, with no recognition of differences in immigration control and policy or legal status, as demonstrated by the focus on EU mobility and concerns over freedom of movement (Anderson, 2017;Anderson and Blinder, 2017;Bulat, 2019;Morrison, 2019). Anderson and Blinder (2017) point out that there is no straightforward mapping of migration data onto the subjects of public debate.…”