The UK labour market and immigration: What a difference ten years makes

Fitzgerald, Ian and Smoczyński, Rafal (2017) The UK labour market and immigration: What a difference ten years makes. In: Immigrants and the labour markets: Experiences from abroad and Finland. Abo Akademi University Press, Turku, pp. 61-76. ISBN 978-952-7167-39-7

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Abstract

The UK has an infamous history of colonialism, which to some extent had begun to be in our distant past as a multi-racial society was established. We argue though that as neo-liberalism has become more dominant in Europe so has the UK seemingly begun to retreat to our shameful past history. Our discussion is based on 10 years continuing research into the area of Polish and European Union (EU) mobility. We detail the extent of Polish migration to the UK and its impact at a local level, as well as, the movement of workers through the Posting of Workers Directive (PWD). Our conclusions from this work are that foreign workers have often been treated poorly both with regard to employment conditions and through xenophobia. However, we conclude that Polish and other foreign workers are far from being just victims or a cost to our society and have in fact provided the UK with economic and social benefits.

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