immigration to the uk presentation

Immigration and Multiculturalism in the United Kingdom

Immigration and multiculturalism in the United Kingdom

A multicultural society.

According to migration statistics published by the House of Commons Library in 2020, 6.2 million people living in the UK have the nationality of a different country, while 9.5 million are British citizens who were born abroad. In 2019, 677,000 people migrated to the UK, while 407,000 emigrated from the UK. Every year since 1998 the number of people moving into the UK has been larger than the number of people leaving by at least 100,000. In recent years there has been much debate about whether the UK is able to sustain this much immigration, and concern about what consequences immigration will have for the country.

How the UK became multicultural

Some would argue that multiculturalism exists in the very framework of the United Kingdom, as it is made up of four countries: Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, each with its own languages, cultures, and traditions. Another view is that the history of multiculturalism in the UK is closely linked to its past as a colonial power. The British Empire spanned the world, and imported not only raw materials, art, and new types of food and drink from the colonies; there were also people who came and settled, looking for greater opportunities in Britain. However, immigration to the UK on a large scale only started after World War II, in part related to the collapse of the British Empire. When colonies gained independence and came under new rule many saw a need to leave, and they sought a home in the UK. Post-war Britain needed manpower and welcomed immigrants from its former colonies, inspiring many to make their home there. Since 1960 the number of immigrants to the UK has typically been larger than the number of people emigrating.

Immigration as a source of conflict

All immigration has the potential to cause conflict. People who already live in an area may see newcomers as a threat to their way of life and worry that they will lose their livelihoods or that their culture will not be respected. When times are good most people will have a relaxed attitude to immigration, especially if there is a surplus of jobs and opportunities. In times of financial hardship or uncertainty people are more likely to take an aggressive stance against immigration.

Immigration as a factor in Brexit

Immigration was an important part of the decision for people who voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Research done by the British Social Attitudes Survey showed that for those who voted to leave 73% were worried about immigration. In the years leading up to the referendum many wanted immigration reduced on economic, social, and cultural grounds. That the EU allowed large groups of immigrants to come and settle increased scepticism of the EU in the UK.

Shared values?

When many different cultures live side by side there may be culture clashes and disagreements about how to live. In the UK British culture is the majority culture, and there is an expectation that people who move to the UK accept certain core values of British society. These are values such as:

• Universal human rights – including rights for women and people of other faiths.
• Equality of all before the law.
• Democracy and the right of people to elect their own government.

Groups in society may reject some or all of these core values, causing conflict with the majority culture. After the 11 September attacks in the USA in 2001, the UK stood by the United States in the War on Terror. In the following years the UK saw several examples of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Islamists who had been born and raised in the country. The deadliest attack happened on 7 July 2005, when several bombs were detonated on buses and trains in London, killing 52 people. Terror attacks like this caused concern about the consequences of immigration and lack of integration.

In 2011, the then Prime Minister David Cameron spoke in favour of no longer tolerating that communities that live in the UK behaving in a manner that is not compatible with British core values. Cameron felt the UK had failed to provide:

"a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong […] a clear sense of shared national identity that is open to everyone […] Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and a much more active, muscular liberalism. A passively tolerant society says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone. It stands neutral between different values. But I believe a genuinely liberal country does much more; it believes in certain values and actively promotes them. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, democracy, the rule of law, equal rights regardless of race, sex or sexuality. It says to its citizens, this is what defines us as a society: to belong here is to believe in these things.”.

The road ahead

The decision to leave the European Union in 2016 was welcomed by immigration sceptics who believe that this will enable the UK to fully control its own borders. No longer bound by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty the UK will not have to welcome EU citizens to study or work in the country. The UK will also not have to obey any shared decisions the EU makes about immigration. However, this control comes at a price: there is concern that there will be a lack of doctors, nurses, and other essential personnel after Brexit is completed. It is also difficult for the UK to achieve complete control of their borders due to pre-existing agreements made about the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. An open border between these two countries is regarded by many as essential to preserving peace in the area.

It is difficult to see what lies ahead for Britain, but what does seem clear is that immigration will continue to be a central political issue.

Bulman, M., 2017, Brexit: People voted to leave EU because they feared immigration, major survey finds, The Independent, retrieved from: Website for the newspaper the Independent.

Cameron, D., 2011, PM's speech at Munich Security Conference , retrieved from: UK government website.

Goodwin, M., 2017, Why immigration was key to Brexit vote, The Irish Times, retrieved from: The article on the website for the newspaper the Irish Times .

House of Commons Library, 2020, Migration statistics , retrieved from: Website for the House of Commons Library.

Quiz: Multiculturalism and Immigration in the UK

Relatert innhold.

Find out more about immigration to the UK.

Read excerpts from two speeches about multiculturalism in the UK.

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Læringsressurser.

Immigration and Multiculturalism

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EU Migration to and from the UK

20 Nov 2023

How many EU migrants are there in the UK? How has the migration of EU citizens changed since Brexit? This briefing provides key statistics on EU migrants and migration in the UK.

• Net migration of EU citizens has been negative since the pandemic and under the post-Brexit immigration system, with immigration falling by almost 70% compared to its 2016 peak. More…
• In 2021, there were approximately 4 million EU-born residents in the UK, making up 6% of the population and 37% of all those born abroad. More…
• The top origin country for EU-born residents is Poland (21%), followed by Romania (14%), the Republic of Ireland (10%), Germany (7%), and Italy (7%). More…
• EU Migrants in the UK are particularly concentrated in London, although to a lesser extent than those from outside the EU. More…
• EU nationals make up around 8% of employments in the UK, although their number has declined since 2019. More…
• An estimated 6.1 million individuals had applied to the EU Settlement Scheme by the end of June 2023, but not all of them are resident in the UK. More…
• As of June 2023, over 2.1 million people held pre-settled status and would need to reapply to EUSS to remain in the UK permanently. More…
• Since the post-Brexit immigration system was introduced in 2021, only 5% of all visas were granted to EU nationals. More…
• New enrolments of EU students fell by 53% after post-Brexit rules took effect. More…
• EU citizens now make up a majority (53%) of those refused entry at the UK border. More…

The EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS)

The new immigration rules do not apply to EU citizens and their family members who were already living in the UK before free movement ended on 31 December 2020 (or eligible family members of EU citizens who can join them at any point after this date). These people instead had to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) and secure pre-settled or settled status (Irish citizens may apply to the EUSS but are not required to).

Settled status is a form of permanent residence in the UK, and is prerequisite for becoming a UK citizen. Pre-settled status is designed for people who have been living in the UK for less than 5 years, while settled status for those living in the UK for 5 years or more. A person with pre-settled status can apply again to EUSS to receive settled status once they have accrued the necessary 5 years’ residence. Under the initial EUSS policy, settled status was permanent but pre-settled status was designed to expire after 5 years. This meant that EU citizens who did not realise they had to reapply would have of losing their status entirely. Following a court decision in 2022, pre-settled status will no longer expire, although it may still be necessary for people to re-apply to the EUSS to demonstrate that they have settled status. Some (but not all) people with pre-settled status face restrictions on their access to certain benefits, such as Universal Credit.

Those living in the UK by 31 December 2020 were expected to apply to the EUSS by the deadline of 30 June 2021, although late applications are permitted where evidence is shown of reasonable grounds for missing the deadline. For more information about the EUSS, see the Migration Observatory report, Unsettled Status – 2020: Which EU Citizens are at Risk of Failing to Secure their Rights after Brexit?

The post-Brexit immigration system

Newly arriving EU citizens and their family members who are not eligible for the EUSS or entering the UK as visitors must obtain a visa in one of three main categories: work, family, or study. Under the rules for skilled workers, the main long-term work visa option for newly hired employees requires applicants to have a job offer for a role that is classified as a middle-skilled or high-skilled occupation. An overview of work-related migration policies and data are available in the Migration Observatory briefing,  Work visas and migrant workers in the UK .

Under the new immigration rules, EU citizens joining family members settled in the UK must meet a £18,600 income threshold . The same requirement does not apply if the person they are joining has status under the EU Settlement Scheme, provided the relationship existed at the end of the transition period and continues to exist at the time of application, or relates to a child born after the end of the transition period.

Under free movement, EU students paid the same tuition fees as ‘Home’ students and were entitled to the same subsidised tuition fee loans. However, following the end of free movement, the academic year 2020/21 was the last year that EU citizens enjoyed these benefits. From 1 August 2021, new EU students must apply for a student visa and have generally been subject to higher international student tuition fees.

Citizens of countries that are in the EEA but not the EU (namely Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein), as well as Switzerland, face effectively the same immigration rules as EU citizens (with some small differences for Swiss citizens). We use the term ‘EU citizens’ throughout the briefing for ease of understanding and because some data sources refer specifically to EU citizens. Note, however, that although Ireland is an EU country and included in some EU data, it is part of the Common Travel Area and hence subject to free movement rules, unlike other EU countries.

In the meantime, we use a variety of sources to offer the best available overview of EU migrants in the UK. Note that different sources of data on migration often paint a slightly different picture, and there is often some uncertainty about exactly why they differ.

Estimates of migration flows to and from the UK come from the ONS’s new, experimental data on long-term international migration. Making use of administrative records, the new methods have the potential to improve migration statistics but are not yet labelled National Statistics, and still have important limitations. Slightly different methodologies are currently employed for measuring EU and non-EU migration.

The data on EU migration flows comes from the Registration and Population Interaction Database (RAPID). RAPID is based on administrative data on benefits and earnings datasets for anyone with a National Insurance number (NINo). It uses the UN definition of a long-term international migrant: a person who changes their country of usual residence for at least a year. The RAPID figures identify the nationality of the person at the time they registered for a NINo and thus include EU citizens who have subsequently naturalised as British citizens. They will exclude any EU citizens who did not register for a NINo until after naturalizing – although naturalisation rates have historically been low for EU citizens and remain relatively low despite recent increases ( Home Office, Section 4.2 ). While previous RAPID estimates offered a breakdown of flows by nationality groups, such data were discontinued in 2020. Where equivalent RAPID data are not available, we use estimates based on the International Passenger Survey (IPS). Readers should note that these figures are thought to underestimate EU immigration, however.

For non-EU citizens, recent ONS estimates rely on border data known as “exit checks” (although they also include entry data). Such data currently only meaningfully cover non-EU citizens, although this will change over time as more EU citizens moving to and from the UK are incorporated into the visa system (rather than, for example, the EU Settlement Scheme). More details can be found in the Migration Observatory briefing, Net migration to the UK .

For estimates of the UK’s resident EU population , this briefing primarily uses 2021 Census data from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. These figures are significantly more accurate than survey-based estimates from between censuses, such as those from the Annual Population Survey (APS). The latter are known to underestimate the migrant population, and their quality has declined over time, particularly since the pandemic. Except for Scotland, their use in this briefing is limited. However, Scotland has not yet released the results of its latest Census, meaning all Scottish data are derived from the APS. To produce our main estimates of the migrant population in 2021, we combine Census data from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland with estimates from the APS in Scotland for the year ending June 2021 (see Appendix).

Our labour market analysis of EU migrants is based on payroll employment estimates produced by the HMRC using administrative tax data. They are built by combining information from the pay-as-you-go (PAYE) real-time information (RTI) database and the Migrant Worker Scan. While they only cover workers on a payroll, and hence exclude the self-employed, such estimates are considerably more accurate in describing post-Covid dynamics on the labour market.

In this briefing, data on international students in UK higher education come from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). HESA categorises students by ‘domicile’: a person’s place of permanent residence before they start their course. This means that some non-UK nationals are UK-domiciled students. Data are sometimes restricted to “newly enrolled” students, to indicate annual inflows. In 2021, HESA changed its data to make it more comprehensive. This means that the statistics for 2021 are not strictly comparable with those for previous years.

This briefing follows the ONS classification that distinguishes between 4 different groups of EU countries based on the year they joined the EU: EU-14, EU-8, EU-2 and EU Other. The countries comprising these groups are available here .

The term ‘migrant’ is used differently in different contexts. In this briefing, we use ‘migrant’ to refer to people who were EU citizens when they moved to the UK. Some data sources provide country of birth, and some provide nationality. Each definition has limitations. Using country of birth has the drawback of including British citizens born abroad, such as the children of parents in the armed forces based overseas. However, defining migrants as the foreign-born has the benefit of including people who have come to the UK and naturalised – something that the nationality-based definition does not take into account. For further discussion of this terminology, see the Migration Observatory briefing, Who Counts as a Migrant: Definitions and their Consequences .

Net migration of EU citizens has been negative since the pandemic and under the post-Brexit immigration system, with immigration falling by almost 70% compared to its 2016 peak.

In the year ending December 2022, the long-term net migration of EU citizens to the UK was negative, at -51,000, according to Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates published in May 2023. Net migration from the EU turned negative in 2020, after the beginning of the pandemic, and continued falling in 2021 and 2022 (Figure 1). This marks a significant change compared to the previous two decades of positive EU net migration. In this time, there were two major peaks in migration from the EU. The first occurred shortly after the 2004 enlargement of the EU and ended following the financial crisis in 2008. The second came in 2013-15, mostly driven by an increase in immigration from the EU-2 countries (Romania and Bulgaria) after restrictions on their right to work in Britain were lifted. In the year ending March 2016, EU net migration peaked at over 280,000, with more than 500,000 EU nationals moving to the UK.

Most of the decline in net migration has occurred because of a sharp drop in immigration (Figure 2), which declined by almost 70% from 2016 to 2022. Long-term EU migration fell before any new policies restricting it came into force – between 2016 and 2020, immigration fell by 35% and net migration declined by more than 80%. Possible explanations for this decline include the fall in the value of the pound, reducing the value of money earned in the UK compared to other EU countries; uncertainty about the political and social situation in the UK after Brexit; and the fact that EU migration had been unusually high in the pre-referendum period and thus might be expected to have fallen anyway. Nonetheless, the figures available so far suggest that the large majority of EU migrants did not leave the UK.

In the same period, overall net migration into the UK continued to rise, reaching an estimated 606,000 in 2022. The fall in EU migration was compensated by a sharp rise in migration from non-EU citizens since 2021. For more information on net migration to the UK, see the Migration Observatory briefing, Net migration to the UK .

The decline in EU net migration particularly affected EU-8 nationals: those from Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004, such as Poland. Between the 2016 and 2020 fiscal years, net migration of EU-8 citizens fell by 126%, from 59,000 to -15,000. By contrast, net migration from both EU-14 and EU-2 countries fell by around 40% in the same period (Figure 2). It is unclear if this trend continued after 2020, when the sharpest drop in overall EU net migration was observed, as the pandemic disrupted the collection of migration statistics (for more detail, see Evidence Gaps and Limitations).

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In 2021, there were approximately 4 million EU-born residents in the UK, making up 6% of the population and 37% of all those born abroad

In 2021, there were approximately 4 million EU-born residents in the UK, according to Census data from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and survey-based data from Scotland (see Understanding the Evidence). The number of EU-born residents in the UK increased by around 50% between the 2011 and 2021 Census (from 2.7 million), reflecting a decade of positive net migration. The EU-born population increased faster than the overall population, with its share rising from 4% to 6% by 2021. However, its share among the total foreign-born population rose only slightly, from 35% to 37%. This shows that even as net migration from the EU increased sharply, it continued to make up a little over a third of overall migration.

A large part of the growth in the EU-born population came from an increase in the number of residents from newer EU-8 and EU-2 member states in Central and Eastern Europe, which now make up a majority (52%) of the EU-born population (1.4 million and 700,000, respectively). The share of those born in older EU-14 member states in Western and Southern Europe fell from 54% in 2001 to 45% in 2021 (1.8 million).

While it is clear that the EU-born population increased significantly in the decade to 2021, changes in the size of this population in recent years are more uncertain. Estimates of the foreign-born population between censuses, based on data from the Annual Population Survey, are less accurate and can significantly underestimate the migrant population (see Evidence Gaps and Limitations). Estimates for the year ending June 2021 show the EU-born population at 3.5 million, around half a million lower than the figure found by the 2021 Census. The same data shows the EU-born population in the UK peaking in 2017 and declining since, although the ONS has separately estimated that net migration remained positive until 2020.

The top origin country for EU-born residents is Poland (21%), followed by Romania (14%), the Republic of Ireland (10%), Germany (7%), and Italy (7%)

According to our 2021 population estimates, about a fifth of EU-born residents in the UK are Polish (21%, 826,000). The next largest groups are people born in Romania (14%, 554,000), Ireland (10%, 389,000), Germany (7%, 298,000), and Italy (7%, 298,000). Compared to the previous census in 2011, by far the largest increase in population was seen among those born in the EU-2 countries, Romania and Bulgaria. The Romanian-born population increased almost 7-fold, from a little over 82,000 in 2011. Over the same period, the Bulgarian-born population grew from under 50,000 to around 159,000. The number of UK residents born in Southern European states like Italy, Spain, and Greece also more than doubled in the ten years to 2021. There was substantial variation among top origin countries (Table 1), with smaller increases in the number of people born in Poland and France, a relatively constant number of German-born residents, and a notable fall in the number of those born in the Republic of Ireland.

Yearly population estimates based on the APS seem to indicate a decline in population since 2017-19 among those born in top Eastern European origin countries like Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and Lithuania that is not visible among those from Western or Southern European member states. However, data collection problems since the pandemic have made these estimates much more uncertain, meaning more data is needed to confirm the trends (see Evidence Gaps and Limitations).

EU-born migrants are more likely to be in the 25 to 34-year-old age group compared to non-EU migrants, but especially compared to the UK-born (Figure 4). About 9% of EU-born migrants were children in 2022. However, the number of EU citizen children is much higher at 17%. This is because there is a substantial number of UK-born EU citizen children. (Some people born in the UK are automatically UK citizens, but this is not always the case and depends on the residence status of the parents at the time the child is born.) For more details on citizenship and children, see the Migration Observatory briefing, Citizenship and naturalisation for migrants in the UK .

EU migrants in the UK are particularly concentrated in London, although to a lesser extent than those from outside the EU

According to the 2021 Census, the highest concentrations of EU-born residents relative to population can be found in London and the East of England (Figure 5). The local authority with the highest share of EU-born residents was Boston in Lincolnshire (20%). Of the top 10 local authorities by share of EU-born population, 7 were in London, including the rest of the top 5 – Kensington and Chelsea (19%), Haringey (18%), the City of London (18%), and Westminster (18%).

Compared to non-EU migrants, EU migrants are less likely to live in London. There are about 1.1 million EU-born residents in London, or 28% of the UK total; among non-EU migrants, the share that live in London is almost 37% (2.4 million). The EU-born are a minority of the migrant population in most local authorities, although there are some exceptions, particularly in the East of England. More information is available in the Migration Observatory briefing, Where do migrants live in the UK? and the Migration Observatory’s Local Data Guide .

EU nationals make up around 8% of employments in the UK, although their number has declined since 2019

As of December 2022, almost 2.5 million EU nationals were in payrolled employment in the UK, making up about 8% of the total. Among them, the largest group were nationals of EU-14 countries (1 million), followed by those coming from EU-8 (900,000) and EU-2 (505,000) countries. Before the start of 2022, EU nationals made up a majority of foreign employees in the UK, yet their number has since been overtaken by those of non-EU migrants in the labour market (Figure 6). Migrants from the EU work in a wide range of occupations and industries – at the end of 2022, their largest employers in the UK were the administrative and support services (388,000), retail (318,000), hospitality (289,000), and manufacturing sectors (285,000).

Before 2019, the number of EU employments grew steadily – by 45% between July 2014 and November 2019, compared to a much smaller rise among non-EU migrants. Much of the increase was driven by EU-2 nationals from Romania and Bulgaria, whose number more than tripled over the same period of time. The employment of EU nationals, however, peaked in November 2019 at around 2.66 million, and declined sharply during the pandemic, falling by more than 7% as of December 2022. Once again, the sharpest decline in numbers was found among EU-8 nationals. For this group, employments in the UK plateaued around 2016-17 and fell by more than 14% between 2019 and 2022.

The decline in EU workers is likely to be a result of the combined effect of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. The employment of EU nationals dropped sharply during 2020 and has only partly recovered since. EU numbers did not bounce back as the economy recovered from the pandemic, as would have been expected had free movement continued. Indeed, take-up of the new immigration system among EU citizens in 2021 and 2022 was very slow (as discussed further below), in contrast to a sharp increase in migration from non-EU countries. At the same time as the employment of EU nationals fell, non-EU nationals’ employee numbers rose by more than 40%. This pattern can be seen across many key economic sectors (Figure 7).

Over time, Brexit and the new immigration system are also expected to shift the balance of jobs that EU workers do in the UK. Compared to free movement, the new system greatly restricted the options for EU citizens to work in occupations that are not classified as skilled (i.e. not requiring at least A-Level or equivalent education and meeting salary thresholds). The pandemic has also affected the balance of jobs available. Employment in some industries, like manufacturing , remains significantly lower than before the pandemic even in 2023, while the number of workers in sectors like health and care has continued to grow .

Employment figures from December 2022 reveal the first effects of this transformation. Compared to November 2019, employment of EU nationals fell particularly sharply in key sectors such as hospitality (-27%) and administrative services (-18%), but also retail and manufacturing (-7% each). In more highly skilled sectors like education, public administration, or information and communication, the number of workers from the EU continued to grow, albeit much more slowly than that of workers from outside the EU.

For more detail on the labour market situation of EU migrants in the UK, see the Migration Observatory briefing, Migrants in the UK Labour Market: An Overview .

An estimated 6.1 million individuals had applied to the EU Settlement Scheme by June 2023

Most EU citizens and their family members already living in the UK before the end of free movement were required to apply to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) to continue living in the UK legally after 30 June 2021. (See the ‘Understanding the Policy’ section above for more details.)

One unexpected outcome of this scheme was the high number of people who applied. By the end of June 2023, an estimated 6.1 million people had applied to EUSS. This includes 5.6m EU citizens, 62,000 EEA/Swiss citizens, and 487,000 non-EEA family members. These figures are lower than the 7.4 million applications during the same period, because around 1.1 million people had applied more than once. Indeed, people with pre-settled status are eventually required to apply again in order to secure settled status.

The original deadline for applications under the EUSS was 30 June 2021. Although most (82%) of the applications have been made by this date, another 1.3 million were submitted in the two years to 30 June 2023, at a relatively steady rate of around 50,000 applications a month (Figure 8). A large share of these are made by repeat applicants or joining family members. However, there were also about 500,000 late applications. Such applications can result in a grant of status if the applicant can prove they were in the UK before 31 December 2020. According to a response to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Migration Observatory, 48% of late applications that had received a final decision by the end of 2022 resulted in a grant of status. Data from the same period also showed EU-2 nationals were over-represented in this group, making up almost half (47%) of all late applications.

It remains unknown how many people are in the UK without status despite having been eligible to apply for the EUSS, or how many might still apply in the future. The number of late applications has not consistently declined over time and remains at over 15,000 a month as of June 2023. For a more in-depth discussion of the number of people who have not applied to the EUSS, see What Now? The EU Settlement Scheme After the Deadline .

The 5.6 million EU citizen applicants by 30 June 2023 is 1.6 million higher than the official estimate of approximately 4 million EU citizens living in the UK in 2021. This difference is likely to be a combination of two main factors. On one hand, emigration means that some EUSS applicants no longer live in the UK. Anyone who lived in the UK before the end of 2020, no matter how briefly, was potentially eligible to apply to the scheme. Many such migrants have since left the country. On the other hand, official statistics may underestimate the size of the EU migrant population. More accurate estimates based on the Census partly address this, yet some uncertainties remain .

As of June 2023, over 2.1 million people held pre-settled status and may need to reapply to EUSS to remain in the UK permanently

By the end of June 2023, an estimated 2.2 million people held pre-settled status and thus may need to reapply to EUSS if they want to remain in the UK permanently (see ‘Understanding the Policy’, above, for details). The majority of these, 1.9 million, are EU citizens.

By the end of June 2023, approximately 608,000 people had moved from pre-settled to settled status, suggesting that around 22% of those granted pre-settled status had upgraded to settled status. This share varied by nationality, ranging from 8% of Swedish citizens to 31% of Italians. The largest number of people who held pre-settled status at the end of June 2023 were Romanians (529,000), followed by Italians (208,000) and Poles (178,000).

Note that the share of people with pre-settled status who upgrade to settled status will never reach 100%. This is because some people with pre-settled status have left the country with no plans to return, and others will break their period of continuous residence due to absences from the UK. Without further data to understand who is still living in the UK, it will not be possible to identify what share of pre-settled status holders who are still living in the UK have received settled status. At the time of writing, what would happen to people who did not reapply remained uncertain (see the ‘Understanding the Policy’ section).

Since the post-Brexit immigration system was introduced in 2021, only 5% of visas were granted to EU nationals

Uptake of the post-Brexit immigration system remains very low among EU nationals. In the two-and-a-half years since free movement ended, from 1 January 2021 to 30 June 2023, EU citizens made up around 5% of all visas granted, excluding visitor visas and those issued under the BNO and Ukraine schemes. This includes around 129,000 EU citizens granted visas, a majority of whom (75,000 or 58%) were issued work visas.

These figures include short-term workers and “frontier workers”—a one-off cohort of people who do not live in the UK but conducted some work here before the end of 2020. Long-term immigration levels from EU citizens coming under the post-Brexit immigration system will thus be substantially lower. If we exclude frontier workers, around 63,000 EU citizens were issued a work visa between January 2021 and June 2023, making up more than 6% of the total. This included over 34,000 EU citizens who were granted skilled worker visas (including health and care visas). The number of EU citizens granted visas has somewhat increased since 2021 (Figure 10) but failed to keep up with the growth in visas issued to non-EU nationals. In 2021, EU migrants made up 6.4% of all visa grants and 8.6% of work visas issued; this had fallen to 4.3% and 5.7%, respectively, in the year ending June 2023.

By contrast, in the year ending March 2019, even after EU migration had already fallen substantially post-referendum, an estimated 410,000 EU citizens made up 58% of non-UK citizens moving long-term to the UK (see Figure 1, above). The share of EU citizens is thus substantially down compared to its trend before the pandemic and Brexit, although the figures may still change over time as people adjust to the new system.

New enrolments of EU students fell by 53% after post-Brexit rules took effect

Post-Brexit rule changes have also led to a sharp decline in the number of international students from the EU. In the 2021/22 academic year, the number of EU-domiciled students enrolling for a new degree in a UK university fell by 53% compared to the year before, from almost 67,000 to a little over 31,000. The decline has been particularly steep among new undergraduate students – new enrolments fell by 63% from 2020/21, compared to only 39% among post-graduate students (Figure 11).

Starting from the 2021/22 academic year, EU citizens have been subject to the same rules as non-EU citizens, including the need to apply for a study visa and pay higher international student tuition fees, without entitlement to government-subsidised loans. The increase in the cost of tuition has affected undergraduates more than post-graduates. Whereas post-graduate fees have always varied widely depending on the type of course, undergraduate fees for EU students were previously capped at the UK level of £9,250 a year; this has now increased by up to 345%, to between £11,400 and £32,000 a year.

While EU student numbers have declined, those of other international students in the UK rose significantly, reaching an all-time high of 350,000 in 2021-22 after a yearly increase of more than 32%. The number of non-EU students started growing in 2016/17 and has roughly doubled since. As a result, EU students now make up just 8% of new international students, compared to almost 27% in the 2016/17 academic year.

For more information on international students in the UK, see the Migration Observatory’s briefing on Student migration to the UK .

EU citizens now make up a majority (53%) of those refused entry at the UK border

In the first half of 2023, around 7,600 EU citizens were initially refused entry at the UK border, a majority (53%) of all those refused entry. This is the result of a sharp increase since post-Brexit rules took effect at the beginning of 2021 (Figure 12). The largest group among those stopped at the border in the first six months of 2021 were citizens of EU-2 countries, particularly Romanians (about 3,800 or 49% in the first half of 2023).

The end of free movement greatly increased the circumstances under which border officers could turn EU citizens away at the border. While EU citizens do not require a visa to enter the UK to visit, border officers have the discretion to turn them away if they believe that they are likely to break immigration rules, such as by working without permission. The sharp increase in EU nationals refused entry to the UK in 2021 sparked media controversy and concern in European capitals after reports of some EU citizens being detained and refused entry despite holding status under the EUSS. The Home Office responded with a clarification , stating that EU citizens refused entry to the UK should not be detained and instead released on immigration bail while they are arranging their return.

While there has been a decline in the number of EU nationals refused entry to the UK since 2021, it remains unclear whether this trend will continue as both officials and travellers better adapt to the new rules. A variety of factors can affect the number of people refused entry, including overall travel volumes, decision-making by border officers, and travellers’ knowledge and understanding of rules changes.

Our main estimates of the 2021 migrant population are obtained by combining data from the latest Census and the APS. The former are still not available in Scotland, meaning APS-derived estimates for the year ending June 2021 were used. The calculations are shown below for different nationality groups, by both country of birth and passport held.

Evidence Gaps and Limitations

The Covid-19 pandemic greatly reduced the quality of some of the UK’s key migration data sources. Survey-based estimates of the population, such as those from the APS, have been particularly affected. The overall response rate of the APS, already below 50% in 2019, fell further during the pandemic. Additionally, migrant non-response to government surveys increased more than that of the UK-born, making comparisons with previous data unreliable. Pending the development of new methodologies, the ONS discontinued their yearly population data on nationality and country of birth in June 2021.

New data sources are being developed that improve our understanding of EU migration. In particular, the new HMRC data on the number of payrolled employees by industry and nationality at the time of registering for a National Insurance Number, represent an important step forward. In future, there is scope to improve the published administrative data, for example with more detail on migration and employment by individual country or region of birth.

Different sources of data on migration and migrants in the UK are not always consistent with each other. There are various reasons for this, including differences in how data sources define migrants; known uncertainty in the estimates, which come with margins of error; and unknown sources of error, such as that arising from the fact that not everyone agrees to participate in official surveys. This means that it is often sensible to look at the overall picture across several data sources, rather than focusing on short-term changes in a single dataset.

Acknowledgements

This briefing was produced with the support of the Economic and Social Research Council and Trust for London. Thanks to Zachary Strain for help updating this briefing and to staff at the Home Office for helpful comments on a previous draft.

• Home Office (2021). How many people continue their stay in the UK or apply to stay permanently?
• Home Office (2021). EU Settlement Scheme quarterly statistics, June 2023.
• Office for National Statistics (2023). EMP13: Employment by industry , August 2023.
• Office for National Statistics (2023). Earnings and employment from Pay As You Earn Real Time Information, UK: September 2023 .
• Office for National Statistics (2021). Quality assurance of Census 2021.
• Complete University Guide (2022). Reddin Survey of university tuition fees .
• Vassiliou, John (2021). EU citizens are being denied entry to the UK – what are the visa rules for visitors? Free movement.
• USA Today (16 Mar 2017) Millions of exiles are caught in Brexit web
• CNN online (05 Oct 2016) UK could force firms to list foreign workers
• Vox (24 Jun 2016) Brexit isn’t about economics. It’s about xenophobia
• The Guardian (13 Jun 2016) Gordon to rescue remain? Then he must do better on immigration
• News.com.au (01 Jun 2016) Brexit campaigners want the UK to adopt an Australian-style points based immigration system

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Migration to the UK: an introduction

Introduction.

• Background and history
• UK legislation 2010-
• Brexit Impact
• Migration stories
• Human Rights and Migration
• Organisations

This is a brief introduction on some areas of discussion on the topic of migration and immigration to the UK.  It looks at the post-WWII era and more narrowly the period from 2010 under the Coalition and Conservative Governments and the Immigration Acts of 2014, 2016 and 2019 and further legislation under the post-2019 governments and Home Secretaries.

In a difficult and complex area, which has profound implications for society, this is an attempt to indicate some key points and to signpost to key sources of information and available resources. 

For more information on migration topics and UK policies, see the subject guide to Government and Society  and the Institute for Research into Superdiversity at the University of Birmingham (2019).  

It is important to note that there are distinctions between the following groups: asylum seekers, refugees, migrants - or immigrants - considered illegal and those considered legal.  However, these can often become blurred, both in general thinking and legislation: for example, those with refugee status who are later taken into the general immigration system.

Respected immigration lawyer Colin Yeo (2020) outlines the background and developments in UK Immigration laws and their effects on people's lives, offering a detailed but accessible introduction to the whole topic.

Please note that here are further guides and resource lists from the University of Birmingham on Equality, Diversity and related issues.  See: Equality and Diversity Guide  including the section on Resource Lists . 

Some references to individual books or articles may require University of Birmingham membership and login for full access.  It is intended that most material should be openly accessible where at all possible.

References:

Institute for Research into Superdiversity, University of Birmingham (2019) Institute for Research into Superdiversity.  Available at:  https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/activity/superdiversity-institute/index.aspx  (Accessed 19 June 2019)

Library Services, University of Birmingham (2020 )Equality and Diversity . Available at:  https://libguides.bham.ac.uk/asc/equalityanddiversity  (Accessed 29 June 2020)

Library Services, University of Birmingham (2019) Government and Society.   Available at:  http://libguides.bham.ac.uk/subjectsupport/govsoc  (Accessed 28 June 2019) 

Yeo, C. (2020)   Welcome to Britain : fixing our broken immigration system . London:Biteback Publishing.

geralt / 21808 Images - Pixabay no attribution required.  Available at:  https://pixabay.com/illustrations/integration-welcome-shaking-hands-1777538/  (Accessed 29 June 2020)

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• Published: 07 January 2021

News media representation on EU immigration before Brexit: the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case

• Marta Martins 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  11 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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A higher level of mobility of people has marked the European Union (EU), with immigrants moving from one place to another, every year, looking for a better quality of life, often fleeing from war and poverty. In the wake of enlargement of the European Union, the United Kingdom (UK) experienced high inward migration. One of the main focuses of UK media coverage was immigration from Eastern European countries. The UK referendum on Brexit on 23 June 2016, was followed by an increase in hate crimes linked to migration issues and, subsequently, a media apparatus of toxic discourse and fear of the criminal ‘Other’. This paper aims to reveal how newspaper articles and personal comments written in response to these articles, represented creative and media-driven anxieties about ‘opening’ borders in the EU. The empirical sample builds on news media coverage of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case, published in two UK newspapers—the Daily Mail and The Independent . Based on critical surveillance studies and cultural media studies, I elaborate on the notion of moral panic, dramatised by the media, which mobilises specific compositions of ‘otherness’ by constructing suspicion and criminalising inequality by particular social and ethnic groups and nationalities. I argue that the media portrays the dramatisation of transnational narratives of risk and (in)security, which redraws territorial borders and (re)define Britain’s global identity. The analysis shows how the news media in the Brexit vote continually raised and legitimised awareness related to the migration as a vehicle that enables the ‘folk-devil’ to cross borders. This context postulates an ideology that converges on a relationship of intransigence and criminal convictions, in the context of a politics of inclusion and exclusion. I conclude by emphasising how the media intersects different social and geographical spaces in which migration takes place. Media-constructed categories of suspicion targets have been previously created and ‘suspect communities’ have already been socially accepted, thereby confirming and reshaping understandings of their identities and communities.

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Introduction

A broad level of mobility of people has marked the European Union (EU) with immigrants moving from one place to another, every year, looking for a better quality of life, driven primarily by economic factors, such as poverty and lack of employment, and also to escape from war. According to the 2020 report by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2019, it is estimated that there are 272 million immigrants in the world, equivalent to 3.5% of the global population (International Organization for Migration, 2020 ). According to the data, the majority of the population does not cross-national borders, and remains in its home country. The United Kingdom (UK) has had one of the highest levels of immigration, with the flow of immigrants increasing until 2016. With Britain as a member of the EU, EU migrants can relatively freely work and live in Britain under the right of free movement of people. However, contrary to media narratives, these inflows have significantly decreased since then (Clegg, 2019 , p. 8). Yet, the discussion of how immigration influenced (or not) the Brexit vote remains very uncertain. However, as expected, journalists show a greater interest in describing acts of violence committed by people that move around, whose mobility tend to be perceived as a contemporary security problem (see Curtice, 2017 ; Tong and Zuo, 2019 ; Walter, 2019 ).

In the wake of enlargement of the EU, the UK experienced substantial high inward migration. One of the main focuses of UK media coverage was immigration from Eastern European countries. Since 2007, after Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, the media focused on symbolic, social and political mobility between citizens “inside” and “outside” the EU, reinforcing a pre-existing demarcation between West and East. The enduring public perceptions of these high inward migration was recreated by a persuasive media rhetoric concerning the overall negative impact of “immigration on jobs, wages, housing or the crowding out of public services” (Wadsworth, 2015 , p. 1). These developments in relation to anti-immigration feelings shaped the period during which the UK decided to leave the EU. The result of the UK’s Brexit referendum, held on June 23, 2016, was followed by an increase in hate crimes linked to migration issues and, subsequently, a media apparatus of toxic discourse and fear of the criminal ‘Other’ (Goodwin and Milazzo, 2017 ; Curtice, 2017 ; Eberl et al., 2018 ). The case of the ‘Euro-Ripper’, which is how the criminal case has become known in the UK press, is one example of the biased media coverage linked to migrants. The case received significant media coverage because of the efficacy of transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU to identifying the first serial killer who crossed borders to commit various crimes, which constitutes another dimension of my research Footnote 1 .

On May 21, 2015, the ‘Euro-Ripper’, named Dariusz Pawel Kotwica, a 29-year-old Polish citizen, brutally murdered an elderly couple in Vienna, Austria. This case had transnational dimensions: the investigations went beyond the crimes committed in Austria. It was also alleged that he committed other crimes in several countries across the EU, including the UK (Beckford, 2015 ). Media coverage of the case was incorporated within the referendum debate. The case sparked so much online interest that it can be considered to be a relevant and robust case concerning ‘porous borders’ and the fluidity of movement across the EU. The press has gradually tended to focus on the idea that ‘EU immigration’ concerns a local community that is moving across EU borders, the “not yet European” (Kuus, 2004 , p. 37). After 47 years, the UK has now left the EU. Until now, the British media has never ceased to stress the destructive impacts of the ‘migratory crisis’ (Griffiths, 2017 ; Fox, 2018 ; Hutching and Sullivan, 2019 ).

While several researchers have focused on traditional media portrayals of migrants and crime, in the context of assessments of Brexit (see Dorling, 2016 ; Gurminder 2017 ; Benson, 2019 ) there has been less research into its effects and practices that affect public attitudes (see Griffiths, 2017 ; Fox, 2018 ; Hutchings and Sullivan, 2019 ). This paper is interested in demonstrating how newspaper articles and personal comments written in response thereof, represented creative and media-driven anxieties about ‘opening’ borders in the EU. Precisely, I analyse how online audiences can reflect the “perspectives of a large segment of the population” (Henrich and Holmes, 2013 , p. 2) and therefore are the most suitable way for citizens to express their authentic opinion on a specific topic that is also discussed by other readers (see Da Silva, 2013 ; Coe et al., 2014 ). The study was inspired by the potential for critical discussion and a unique opportunity to provide a relevant case study about the context of the Brexit debate and EU immigration dialogue.

The empirical sample builds on a news media related to coverage of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case. Based on critical surveillance studies and cultural media studies, I elaborate on the notion of moral panic (Cohen, 2002 ; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 ) dramatised by the media, which mobilises specific compositions of otherness by constructing suspicion and criminalising inequality by particular social and ethnic groups and nationalities. I analyse ‘moral panic’ as distortion and amplification of “significant others” (Dumitrescu, 2018 , p. 82) caused and legitimised by the media. The distorted image materialises the myth of “folk-devils ” characterised as “ agents responsible for the threat” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 , p. 149). Once the figure of the “devil” has been formulated, through the creation of a moral panic, it is easily recognisable. In other words, “folk devils are deviants; they are engaged in wrongdoing; their actions are harmful to society; they are selfish and evil; they must be stopped, their actions neutralised” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 , p. 29). These forms of anxiety generated by ‘moral panic’ represented by the media about who we should or should not fear (Krulichová, 2019 ). Thereby, media-constructed categories of previously created targets of suspicion and already socially accepted ‘suspect communities’, confirm and reshape understandings of their identities and communities (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009 ; El‐Enany, 2018 ; Abbas, 2019 ).

The article is structured as follows: section “The context of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case” outlines the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case in the media context, focusing on the online debate related to the interlocking reactions of EU immigration after Brexit. Section “Data and methods” explains the methods that guided the design of the study. Drawing on the work of Goode and Ben-Yehuda ( 1994 , p. 156) the analysis is conducted using “five crucial elements or criteria” of moral panic: Concern; Hostility; Consensus; Disproportionality and Volatility. The definition of moral panic stated by the five criteria it is the “most systematic historical and theoretical account of moral panic” (Ungar, 2001 , p. 275). My analysis, therefore, outlines that the public reactions to the EU immigration rhetoric can be analysed within the framework of Stan Cohen’s conceptualisation model, confirming the contemporary utility of moral panic analysis. I argue that the media portrays the dramatisation of transnational narratives of risk and (in)security, which redraws territorial borders and (re)defines Britain’s global identity. The analysis shows how the news media in the Brexit vote continually raised and legitimised awareness related to migration itself as a vehicle that enables the ‘folk-devil’ to cross borders. This context postulates an ideology that converges on a relationship of intransigence and criminal convictions in a politics of inclusion and exclusion. I conclude by emphasising how the media intersects different social and geographical spaces in which migration takes place.

The context of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case

On May 21, 2015, the newspapers described the violent circumstances in which an elderly couple of 75 and 74 years had been raped, tortured, mutilated and murdered in Vienna, Austria. Following transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU, a 29-year-old Polish man, named Dariusz Pawel Kotwica, was identified (see Machado and Granja, 2018 ). Kotwica, or the ‘Euro-Ripper’, not only confessed to the crime, he also mentioned that several months earlier he had committed another murder in Sweden, near Gothenburg on April 23, of a 79-year old man. Additionally, he confessed that he robbed several stores in 2012 and committed another murder in Salzburg, Austria. Moreover, he admitted to causing grievous bodily harm in the Netherlands, in 2011. In 2015 he stole from a shop in Germany and committed a murder in Sweden. According to police reports, there is still the possibility of further possible murders in the Czech Republic and the Netherlands. Austrian police also found that Dariusz Pawel Kotwica remained in the UK for several years, and therefore suspicions were raised about the possibility that he may have committed other “serious crimes” there (Beckford, 2015 ; Khan, 2015 ). On June 8, 2015, the suspect was arrested at the Düsseldorf railway station in Germany and was immediately extradited to Austria, where he was tried.

The ‘Euro-Ripper’ immediately attracted major media attention. In particular, attention focused on his fluidity and flexibility of movement across six countries over several years. It is also suspected that he may have committed many crimes in the UK, where he lived for many years. Notably, his use of the EU’s open borders became the focus of extreme and harrowing media narratives at the time of the Brexit referendum. This discourse became more pronounced in the UK news media, which focused its attention on ‘Other migrants’ who are crossing borders to find new victims. The agenda-setting raised several public voices who argued that a European society which facilitates freedom of movement of people, goods and services, offers a major opportunity for criminality (Bigo, 2002 , 2014 ; El‐Enany, 2018 ; Abbas, 2019 ; Benson, 2019 ).

My focus in this paper is to show how newspapers articles related to the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case, and personal text comments written in response to the articles, represented processes of belonging, (re)producing pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities about a sense of national community that incorporates British identity. A crucial element of this approach is that the online bubble has significantly changed the way that people react to each story and how their beliefs are formulated, “creating new spaces for political expression and participation” (Da Silva, 2013 , p. 176). The following section describes the data and methods analysed in function of the selected newspapers.

Data and methods

For this study, I analysed the comments posted online in response to the two articles published in two UK newspapers related to the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case. The first article was circulated in the Daily Mail (Beckford, 2015 ) entitled “Europe’s first serial killer who raped and murdered his way across continent to Britain: Police investigate Pole who daubed bizarre phrases on woman’s naked body in sickening crime spree across six countries” on 28 November 2015. And the article “Dariusz Pawel Kotwica: ‘Europe’s first serial killer’ could have committed ‘serious crimes’ in Britain” published in The Independent (Khan, 2015 ) on 29 November 2015, after Dariusz Pawel Kotwica was arrested. These articles were selected due to extend and a variety of comments that it generated online. These offer a unique position to think about what inspired the commenters to write about the case.

As Ofcom released its annual report ( 2019 ) on news consumption in the UK, news users are more likely to access news through comments, news links and trends. Though these feature readers could create a conversation that strongly public deliberation of the online public sphere (see Dahlgren, 2009 , p. 168). As Henrich and Holmes ( 2013 , p. 2) explain, “comments cannot be taken as representative of the views of the general population. However, due to the high number of comments available on certain articles, they can reflect the perspectives of a large segment of the population”. I refined the analyses in order to focus on the articles that received the most significant comments. Therefore, due to its news value, the data collection took place exclusively online and provided the presence of 250 comments in the Daily Mail and 14 comments in The Independent . I believe that the approach was sufficient and that the news environment provides a satisfactory proxy that significantly impacts public understanding. Similar to other studies (see Da Silva, 2013 , 2015 ; Boyd, 2016 ), the selection was not made based on the newspapers with the largest circulation. An inclusion criterion was to embrace all comments directly related to the article.

The articles were posted under different platforms available for comments. Daily Mail is a daily newspaper, that is well-known amongst British citizens as a popular right-wing tabloid. In the broadsheet, The Independent , also a daily newspaper, tilted to the left of the political spectrum. Briefly, the tabloid press presents itself as a vehicle for news related to emotion, personal entertainment, with less relevance to politics, the economy, and society at large. The broadsheet press, predominantly, has the privilege of dealing with political, social, economic, and cultural themes with great celebrity to reflection and argumentation (Skovsgaard, 2014 ). At the European level and, according to Mihelj et al. ( 2008 ), both newspapers are general similarities and can be compared across countries.

The Daily Mail newspaper does not have a paywall, which therefore makes it easier for users to read and respond to articles. However, Daily Mail warns that all opinions expressed by users do not necessarily reflect the perspectives and views of the newspaper. It therefore adopts a pre-moderation strategy (see Da Silva, 2013 , p. 182). The administration of comments, prior to their publication, implies that journalists carefully evaluate the quality of all comments before they are published. In The Independent , the comments appear in a section to share thoughts, which is stated to be freely accessible. This uses a post-moderation strategy, in which there is careful evaluation of comments. As a result, abusive comments, even after they have been notified by other users as inappropriate, can remain online for an extended period of time, and, this dynamic may even disrupt the path of the discussion (Da Silva, 2013 , p. 183). In this specific circumstance, due to the undesirable course that many comments triggered, the newspaper progressively chose to delete some comments that did not obey with the established rules. Additionally, as a general rule, this type of interaction is a common way to provide “a truer insight into people’s opinion than those expressed in other contexts” (Henrich and Holmes, 2013 , p. 2), the vast majority of comments in both newspapers required registration, but the option to use a nickname made it possible to remain anonymous.

The analysis uses a grounded theory approach, with a “continuous interplay between analysis and data collection” (Strauss and Corbin, 1994 , p. 273). The unit analysis chosen for coding was the paragraph, coded on the themes addressed following the principles of content analysis in qualitative research, using an approach which combines manifest and latent analysis contexts. For this article, the analysis has directed a careful and critical look at the social and symbolic representations that the press assumes on procedures used in the coverage of the criminal case, where the ‘criminal other’ are the epicentres of the crime narrative.

Moral panic representations of EU immigration before Brexit

Since the original definition of ‘moral panic’ propounded by Cohen ( 1971 , p. 9), the concept has served as an analytical tool. The concept has direct resonance with British press coverage of ‘Euro-Ripper’ case, in particular:

“A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnosis and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (…) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. (…)”.

This concept, since its origin, has undergone a critical academic process. Other authors have followed its analytical conceptualisation. Besides the many advances derived from Cohen’s work, I apply the approach proposed by Goode and Ben-Yehuda ( 1994 ), a “historical and theoretical account of moral panic” (Ungar, 2001 , p. 275). The authors argue that it is possible to examine the potential existence to ‘moral panic’ through the existence (or absence) of five attributes: (1) concern —related to ‘Others’ behaviour and the possible consequences that can lead to action and mobilisation of fear-inducing practices; (2) consensus —that establishes a widespread belief that the problem is real and constitutes a threat; (3) hostility —that the persons responsible come from a group or category of people who have been subjected to inequalities and repulsion; (4) disproportionality —that applies when the issue is greater than the potential damage and, (5) volatility —when panic unexpectedly breaks out and then dissolves with stunning speed.

Table 1 provides an overview of the moral panic applied in the selected newspapers, by presenting the five attributes.

Concern and consensus

According to the UK newspapers , Daily Mail and The Independent , Dariusz Pawel Kotwica was the first criminal who benefited from the Schengen agreement of 14 June 1985, and, therefore, permeable borders have facilitated the ‘uncontrolled travels’ of criminals within the EU. A comment on the Daily Mail article states:

“The Schengen system is a farce and should be scrapped with immediate effect.” (Comment B, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

The media attention on the ‘need’ for border management of risky populations in search of the European dream (see Bigo, 2002 , 2014 ) claims that the volume and intensity of media discourse related to this particular criminal case (re)created a sense of ‘panic’ regarding the free movement of people. Didier Bigo ( 2002 ) makes this situation clear by stating that migration issues have been linked to statements centred on (in)security issues and the media are the ‘heroes’ in this thought-orientation. The newspapers emphasise that the criminal on the move can circulate to other countries with the same purpose in mind. Using a discourse that encourages action and order, the comments demand that borders must be closed immediately: “ Close our borders now !!!!!”, “ We should close our borders now .” (Comment C and E, Daily Mail , 28 November 2015). Similar to other studies related to moral panic in an enlarging EU (see Nellis, 2003 ; Mawby and Gisby, 2009 ; Walsh, 2017 ), the members of the public argue that only the reinstatement of borders can prevent these criminals from finding new victims. According to these comments, this type of criminal can ‘escape’ without punishment, as explained in the following comment:

“This goes to prove that a free of checks border less Europe is a bad thing. Freedom of movement gives people such as this despicable character a massive area to commit crimes, to target vulnerable people then slip away unnoticed. (…) The borders need to be reinstated (…).” (Comment D, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

It is important to recall that since 2015, discussion of Brexit has led to significant challenges for ethnic minorities in the UK. The referendum fuelled a major argument that with Brexit, the UK would have “more control over the flow of immigrants (…) many people are concerned that high levels of immigration may have hurt their jobs, wages and quality of life” (Wadsworth et al., 2015 , p. 2). Also, an increased number of crimes stand linked to migration issues, underlining the social apparatus of open borders in the UK (see Bigo, 2002 ; Clifford and White, 2017 ; Abbas, 2019 , p. 3; El‐Enany, 2018 ). As stated in the following comment:

“We used to have to deal just with our own murderers, rapists and terrorists. Now they come from all over the world thanks to the EU open borders policy.” (Comment F, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

As Elspeth Guild ( 2001 , p. 29) points out, the EU materialises itself as an ‘internal border’, without controls on the basis of nationalism. These norms mobilise a rhetoric based on the idea that borders function as walls. Nevertheless, the idea of belonging has intrinsically been linked to the concept of citizenship, which is called into question when citizens cross borders “leaving the spaces where they belong” (Bigo, 2005 , p. 80). Nevertheless, the comments, in particular in the Daily Mail , fans voices that urge the UK to leave the EU in order not to maintain open borders. The Brexit debate was marked and followed by a discourse that postulates who should belong and who has the right to stay, with a sense of governance:

“ Get us the hell out of the EU .” (Comment X, Daily Mail , 28 November 2015)

“ The referendum should hopefully see a big swing towards ‘NO’ and ‘OUT’ of the EU . Then, everyone will be checked as we won’t have ‘Open Borders’!!!!” (Comment E, Daily Mail , 28 November 2015)

After a string of comments, these voices also offer vivid displays of nationalism and unity, intersecting different social and geographical spaces, in which migration takes place. The data also demonstrates that borders “rather than fixed lines, (…) are now seen as processes, practices, discourses, symbols, institutions or networks through which power works” (Johnson et al., 2011 , p. 62). This framework supports both a State that cultivates social control and exclusion policies for some, as well as more open borders and greater mobility for the enemy, the ‘monsters’ others (Zaiotti, 2007 ; Bosworth and Guild, 2008 ; Bosworth, 2014 ). According to the comments, the political and social regime does not offer solutions. On the contrary, it presents criminals with a ‘ five-star hotel ’. For example:

“Kill and rape all over Europe. Come to Britain and get a five-star hotel.” (Comment H, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

“Thanks to open borders monsters like this exist.” (Comment I, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

People relate open borders to the increase in crime and migratory flows of immigration. One of the main concerns is the open borders made possible by the Schengen system. This framework reaffirms a “borderless world” (Bowling, 2015 , p. 1) in which there is no control and regulation of those who take advantage of the borders’ performance and then commit crimes across States. The outcome of Brexit highlights this context and produces a consensus “posted by (…) borders crossers” (Wonders, 2006 , p. 65) which establishes a rhetoric of threat amplification. Subsequently, measures to combat the problem are shaped by a border control industry, that aims to manage populations which are considered to be suspect. This circulation develops forms of identity that are mapped by specific social practices that can provide an “ideology of circulation” (Lee and LiPuma, 2002 , p. 195) as we will see below.

Hostility and disproportionality

Each country has followed its own cultural and historical development: Eastern European countries have developed for many years on the basis of a historical configuration and creation of a well-marked and incorruptible border between the East and the rest of Europe (see Bigo, 2002 , 2005 ; Kuus, 2004 ; Said, 2004 ; Abbas, 2019 ). As Mignolo and Tlostanova ( 2006 , p. 211) argue, “today, the split configuration of internal others is expressed in the continuing hierarchy of othering”. Over time, Eastern Europeans have been affected by unequal, political and media intolerance. Countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, are connoted as messengers of “folk devils”, i.e. are linked to numerous criminal practices and illegal activities. As such, certain Eastern European countries are viewed as sending criminals to rich countries, such as the UK. This context suggests an ideology that converges on a relationship between intransigence and criminal convictions in a politics of inclusion and exclusion. This can be seen in the following comments:

“We have now more criminals entering UK from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, what next???Albania???? (Capital of crime!!!!) And no one checks at borders!!!! Stupid.” (Comment J, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

“Seems that many don’t watch the amount of Eastern Europeans from Romania and such like that find the UK an easy touch for their crime activities such as pickpockets, shoplifters, burglary, metal theft, farm animal theft among many other illegal activities, and if caught they are let out on bail only to disappear back to Eastern Europe for a while before returning for more of the same. The insanity of the EU is turning the UK into a cesspit.” (Comment N, The Independent, 29 November 2015)

These public discourses instigate the idea that the solution is to control borders, under the same symbolic idea of fighting an “enemy”. In other words, the uncertainty of the unknown is materialised by shared representations about who must enter or leave, in the name of a European identity nationalism (Bigo, 2005 , p. 36). The social impact of this distorted, poorly informed and deeply contaminated media coverage, based on a political game of obscure and harmful interests, often leads to specific individuals and groups to being marginalised and labelled through police interventions and punitive repressions. It is not just a question of punishing or rehabilitating, but of identifying and managing “groups and populations at risk” (Cohen, 1971 ; Mawby and Gisby, 2009 ; Clifford and White, 2017 , p. 164). Several comments alluded to the need for stricter attitudes in the face of this irregular migratory context which is claimed to be linked to criminal practices. The comments point out that the most capable and convenient solution in this situation would be the death penalty, without any tolerance:

“And no European countries have the death penalty …” (…) “It’s a shame that the EU doesn’t have a death penalty . “(…) “And I wonder why the EU abolish penalty for ?!” (Comments R, S and T, Daily Mail , 28 November 2015)

The case of the ‘Euro-Ripper’ is a mediated criminal event, endorsed by the brushstrokes of (in) security. Discourses of vulnerability are consolidated and declared to be imposing when the media reinforces the discourse that fits into a “construction of otherness” (Kuus, 2004 , p. 473). The so-called “war on terror” (Balzacq et al., 2010 , p. 6) is triggering the action of vigilant mechanisms under the sharing of a global threat proliferated, necessarily by unfounded and disproportionate alarmism, identified under the version that the population must be protected:

“Makes me feel sick. Be vigilant people!!!!!” (Comment W, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

In biopolitical terms, borders not only exercise power and discipline, they also identify circulations and flows considered to be dangerous. As Petit ( 2019 , p. 4) argues, security seems to be under a “backbone” that supports fear, with the ability to create scenarios of terror:

“Disgusting evil pervert, lock him up and let him rot and then throw away the key.” (Comment V, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

The creation of fear conveyed as hostility, in this case, is perceived through the exacerbation of feelings of disgust towards transgressors. There is claimed to be a need for greater vigilance and control of those who have defamed as social outcasts, the “usual” suspects (see Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009 ). They are the “folk devils” invoked by the media and political campaigns that articulates “territorial conceptions associated with the crime that, on the one hand, projects notions of ‘European’ and ‘global’ territory and, on the other hand, reproduces territorial inscriptions that consolidate criminal associations to populations of particular nationality” (Martins et al., 2016 , p. 5). This construction of migrants as a problem on a European scale is not only a way of identifying the rival, but it is also a government technique that seeks to install alarm, anxiety and discomfort (Bigo, 2005 ; Lalonde, 2017 ; De Noronha, 2019 ). Nevertheless, the proportion of the different crimes portrayed represents the reverse of the official statistics represented (Sacco, 1995 ; Pfeiffer, 2005 ; Pollak and Kubrin, 2007 ; Cheliotis, 2010 ; Boda and Szabó, 2011 ). Disproportionality provided by the readers, and legitimised by the media discourses, is therefore higher than the potential damage. One underlying logic is that the warning of worse pictures, disproportionate measures, are often framed in the context of profiles of certain groups or populations where the label is applied under nationality and phenotype.

The formation of public opinion has been invaded by compositions formed and consolidated in a social texture that is complex and requires different systems and social actors. Therefore, in the definition and (re) invention of dynamics of a ‘moral panic’ are configured with a dual function, i.e. to create a 24-h news cycle that merely corresponds to brief eruptions that tend to fade over time (see Falkof, 2018 ). Informed by these issues, the comments suggest that the article showed the idea that more serial killers such as the ‘Euro-Ripper’ can cross Europe due to the open borders and, consequently accelerate their criminal practices in other countries:

“The article clearly means the first serial killer (that we know of) to commit murders across Europe rather than in one individual country. And that free movement in the EU facilitated his actions. Not too hard to grasp is it? (…)” (Comment A, The Independent, 29 November 2015)

In the media, as a general rule, a criminal act is understood in the light of stereotyped conceptions, based on “hierarchical criteria, conferring precise importance to each episode” (Mangone and Pece, 2017 , p. 105). The social representation of crime as a form of moral panic, which I have clarified throughout this article, is based on two primary dimensions: the image of the crime and the symbolism that this image conveys. Meanwhile, after a string of comments were deleted, a new line of rhetoric emerged that recognises that “(…) The media thus tend…to reproduce symbolically the existing structure of power in society’s institutional order” (Hall et al., 1978 , p. 358). Comments began to highlight the fact that media narratives are establishing mechanisms that construct, in a certain period, the dominant buildings for structural and fixed identities:

“Europe has never had a serial killer before?” (Comment Z, Daily Mail, 28 November 2015)

Using the criterion of volatility , Goode and Ben-Yehuda ( 1994 , p. 158) state that “the degree of fear, hostility and concern generated during a moral panic tends to be fairly limited temporally”. Volatility changes according to current social emergencies and the growing multiculturalism of the border area. Likewise, specific stories would take on a dimension of hysteria and a sense of vulnerability, but the negative tone can quickly “become institutionalised” (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 , p. 159). At a given moment, the media adopted a hostile stance towards groups of individuals from Eastern Europe, portrayed as being threatening, or focused on other groups of individuals, specifically ethnic minorities. This is a kind of numb cloud, that floats between “Us” and “Others”.

This analysis corroborates what Cohen ( 2002 ) observed. In general terms, Cohen assumed the views that the media are responsible for the proliferation of sensationalist representations and the transmission of stereotypes that generate unrealistic and unfounded expectations in the general public (Chouliaraki, 2005 ). In fact, the media tend to increase unfounded anxieties and turn them into assets that should be feared by society (see Mawby and Gisby, 2009 , p. 47; Falkof, 2018 ). According to Berkeley ( 2006 , p. 30), “a multiplicity of media panics about new immigrants holds a public perception of perpetual crisis about immigration policies and social problems”. With the increase in crime at the transnational level, the tension between ‘open borders’ and the limitation of’ mobile threats’ (Walsh, 2017 ; Hilder and Kemshall, 2016 , p. 132) (re)produces criminal associations that co-articulate the ‘Other European’ (Strath, 2002 ; Kuus, 2004 ; Said, 2004 ) and the “feared predator” (Fattah, 1982 , p. 113). Many of these discussions led to the context of the Brexit referendum, which “would allow more control over the flow of immigrants to the UK from the rest of EU” (Wadsworth et al., 2015 , p. 2). A new metaphorical language has been introduced within the media lexis. I highlight three central point’s arising from this language: (i) the narratives that instigate the appeal for (in)security caused by the entry of migrants; (ii) the highlight on more punishing cooperation and, finally, (iii) the flow of transnational movements linked to criminal practices.

Concluding remarks

The ‘Euro-Ripper’ story enacts different perceptions of risk, vulnerability and nationality under the effect of new (old) social emergencies (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 , p. 33; Walsh, 2017 ). Through the media spotlight, this case observes, together with the advent of the internet, the reinforcement of an inevitable ‘moral panic’ (Cohen, 2002 ; Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 ; Mawby and Gisby, 2009 ). Furthermore, and importantly, the media also track the emotional and moral force of the case to socially held views. The ‘Euro-Ripper’ case continues to be relevant today, with a unique and sensationalist focus mediated by the rhetoric of freedom and movement because of the Schengen agreement (it is important to recall that the UK sits outside the Schengen region). The media accounts of this case enacted the drama, hysteria and anxieties of irregular migration practices in the EU and focused on the fear of the ‘Other’ (see Krulichová, 2019 ) brought about by the lack of security managed by this migratory flow of people. I therefore argue, in line with other studies (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 1994 ; Mawby and Gisby, 2009 ; Griffiths, 2017 ; Fox, 2018 ) that the logic of news formats promotes the reproduction of relationships of power and alarm and, encourages the public sphere to think about whom we should fear. Specifically, how our collective memories of crime are imagined? How can a reported crime originate and motivate political, social and cultural reactions and, therefore, (re)define what may become a social problem?

This study suggests that the proliferating news about this criminal case can be explained, as argued by Goode and Ben-Yehuda ( 1994 ), through analysis of the potential for ‘moral panic’ through the existence of five crucial attributes: Concern, Consensus, Hostility, Disproportionality and, Volatility. Considering the overall approach, I argue that the presence of moral panic relies on various practises related to migrant populations. Citizens on the move have always existed, in particular, those who seek better conditions of life, employment and security. However, circulation of the ‘Other’ across the EU converges a stereotyped and dominant view of time and space that ‘normalises’ social control and surveillance, mainly motivated by countries in the centre of the EU. Nevertheless, the Leave campaign in the UK, within the Brexit debate, resounded with public perceptions that link immigrants and certain ethnic minorities to crime (Bigo, 2002 , 2005 , 2014 ; Said, 2004 ; Kuus, 2004 ; Krulichová, 2019 ). This article provides evidence that this representation, which is sometimes uninformed, has long-lasting ramifications, guides action in everyday life and, strengthens a world view from this labelled perspective. The article supports two main arguments: (1) The publicity and exposure to news media that covered an alarm and visibility about EU immigration mainly helps to reproduce and raise awareness related to migration as a vehicle that enables the ‘folk-devil’ to cross borders; (2) EU immigration is used as an umbrella term for the creation of categories of previously created suspicion targets and already socially accepted ‘suspect communities’. Eastern European immigration that news media have highlighted confirms and reshapes understandings of their identities and communities as a criminal ‘Other’.

The results also have shown that immigration poses a false threat to society and “project images of reality that are pending from the cultural structures and economies that support them” (Machado and Santos, 2008 , p. 2). On the one hand, news media contribute to social control and reproduction as a means to entertain the public, as, on the other hand, they (re)produce cultural artefacts that lead to changes in values and identities (Machado and Santos, 2008 , pp. 2–3). Further research should explain this analysis and compare the results and extend it to a qualitative study with people’s perceptions of immigration and the effects on the spectre of the suspicion community.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

The case is part of a more extensive study whose main objective was to understand media narratives about the application of DNA technologies in transnational criminal cases. This study benefited from the support of EXCHANGE project [grant agreement no. 648608 to H.M.] that explores the societal, cultural, ethical, regulatory and political impacts of the use of forensic DNA technologies in the European Union, led by Helena Machado and hosted at the Communication and Society Research Centre, Institute for Social Sciences of University of Minho (Portugal).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [grant agreement no. 648608 to H.M.], within the project ‘EXCHANGE—Forensic geneticists and the transnational exchange of DNA data in the EU: Engaging science with social control, citizenship and democracy’ led by Helena Machado and hosted at the Communication and Society Research Centre, Institute for Social Sciences of University of Minho (Portugal).

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Martins, M. News media representation on EU immigration before Brexit: the ‘Euro-Ripper’ case. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00687-5

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8 Cultural Integration in the United Kingdom

The authors would like to thank Andrew Clark (PSE) for his helpful comments.

• Published: September 2012
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This chapter compares a relatively wide range of outcomes for the main ethnic minorities in the UK with the outcomes for white natives. The chapter also compares the outcomes for the foreign and UK born. The indicators we look at are fertility, marriage, and divorce rates, interethnic marriage, spousal age gaps, the gender gap in education, employment rates, national identity, religiosity, and language use. The chapter finds substantial heterogeneity across ethnic minority communities but also evidence that in almost all dimensions and for all groups, the UK-born minorities are closer to white natives than the foreign born.

8.1 Introduction

The UK has had a much longer history of large-scale immigration than many other European countries. For a long time there was a certain smug satisfaction that its generally tolerant and accommodating approach to cultural diversity had been relatively successful, although there is no doubt that problems of racism persisted. But this self-satisfaction has, in many quarters, now turned to alarm that some immigrant groups are not following the stereotypical immigrant path of economic and cultural integration into mainstream society. But, while views on this topic are often very strongly held, the evidence base is often weaker than one would like. That is what we seek to address in this chapter.

The plan of the chapter is as follows. The next section summarizes very briefly the history of immigration into the UK since 1945, the policy towards integration and the voluminous existing literature on the economic and social circumstances of ethnic minorities in Britain. The third section provides details about the data used in our analysis and presents some descriptive statistics as background for our findings in subsequent sections. The fourth section studies fertility, the fifth marriage and divorce, the sixth the gender gap in educational attainment, the seventh female employment, and the eighth values like national identity, religiosity, and language.

All in all, we find considerable heterogeneity across ethnic minority communities along the outcomes considered. However, we also find evidence of a marked change in all these areas and this change is always in the direction of the behaviour of the indigenous British.

8.2 A brief history of immigration and integration policy in the UK since 1945

8.2.1 immigration.

Compared to many other European countries, the UK began to experience sizeable immigration much earlier, starting fairly soon after 1945. In the 1950s immigrants from the Caribbean and in the 1960s from the Indian sub-continent arrived, primarily as workers to help alleviate labour shortages. As the economy worsened in the 1970s, there were fewer economic migrants, though there was a steady trickle through family reunification and the 72,000 Ugandan Asians expelled by Idi Amin. However, as the economy improved again in the 1990s, there was a return of economic migration, with sizeable inflows from Eastern Europe (especially after the enlargement of the EU) and from Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the 1990s saw sizeable inflows of refugees. The proportion of immigrants in the UK population is now at its highest level since 1945 and the immigrant population is very diverse—for a summary of the ethnic minority population see Peach ( 1996 ).

8.2.2 Integration policy

By European standards, the UK began to wrestle with the question of how best to incorporate immigrant populations into society very early. What emerged as the dominant idea (essentially a form of ‘multiculturalism’) is well-summarized by the following quotation from the Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1966:

I do not regard [integration] as meaning the loss, by immigrants, of their own national characteristics and culture. I do not think that we need in this country a ‘melting pot’, which will turn everybody out in a common mould, as one of a series of carbon copies of someone’s misplaced vision of the stereotyped Englishman…I define integration, therefore, not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.

This led to early (by European standards), legislation against discrimination (the first law being the 1965 Race relations Act) and a generally sympathetic attitude to allowing cultural and religious exemptions to laws and practices, for example allowing Sikh motorcyclists to wear turbans instead of helmets and Muslim policewomen to wear the hijab on duty. There was a belief that if natives were hospitable to immigrants, the minorities would, in return, come to feel part of the wider community—just one big happy family. The reality was often far from this rosy picture, as there were riots in many British cities in the early 1980s and various organizations, notably the police, have been widely criticized for institutional racism.

But more recently there has been a feeling that this strategy of multiculturalism has failed to create a common core of values, primarily because it offered minorities more than it asked from them in return and that some communities chose not to integrate into the wider society. Events like the London bombings of 2005 have shocked people into thinking something has gone badly wrong. For example, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality (a non-departmental public body aimed to tackle racial discrimination and promote social equality, currently merged into the new Equality and Human Rights Commission) argued in a TV interview that multiculturalism was leading to segregation, saying that ‘too many public authorities particularly [are] taking diversity to a point where they [are] saying, “actually we’re going to reward you for being different, we are going to give you a community centre only if you are Pakistani or African Caribbean and so on, but we’re not going to encourage you to be part of the community of our town”’. The reaction has included not just a wringing of hands but also substantive changes to policy—immigrants becoming citizens now have to pass a test on language, culture, and history designed to mould their values into those deemed appropriate.

8.2.3 Existing literature on immigrants and ethnic minorities

There is a vast amount of research on the ways in which the economic and social circumstances of ethnic minorities in Britain differs from that of the indigenous white population. 2 The earliest papers on economic outcomes (most commonly measured as earnings, employment, and unemployment) were probably Chiswick ( 1980 ) and Stewart ( 1983 ). Since then, there have been many studies, considering diversity in the ethnic minority experience (see Blackaby et al ., 1997 ; Modood et al ., 1997 ; Clark and Drinkwater, 2007 ; Elliott and Lindley, 2008 inter alia), the difference between first and second-generation immigrants (e.g. Blackaby et al ., 2002 , 2005 ), the importance of language fluency (Leslie and Lindley, 2001 ; Lindley, 2002a ; Dustmann and Fabbri, 2003 ), rates of integration (Bell, 1997 ; Clark and Lindley, 2006 ), the role of religion as opposed to ethnicity (Lindley, 2002b ), and differences in time-use (Zaiceva and Zimmermann, 2007 ). These studies have given us excellent snapshots of the position of different ethnic minorities. In particular, earnings and employment penalties are typically found to be largest for the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who are among the most economically disadvantaged groups in British society.

But, there is much less in the way of research into how this is changing over time. This is probably due to the fact that many ethnic minority populations in Britain are of relatively recent origin so that, until very recently, it has been hard to say anything very precise about trends. But there are a number of recent studies that do explicitly address the question of changes over time. Lindley et al. ( 2006 ) investigate how women’s employment rates among ethnic minorities have been changing, paying particular attention to the changing role of education. Clark and Drinkwater ( 2007 ) compare data from the 1991 and 2001 censuses, looking at the way in which employment and unemployment rates have changed for different ethnic minorities. They find little change in the gap between the employment rates for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis on the one hand and whites on the other. Similar persistence in employment disadvantage is found in Berthoud and Blekesaune ( 2007 ) using General Household Survey data from 1974 to 2003 and in Dustmann and Theodoropoulos ( 2010 ), who, however, report more pronounced inter-generational improvements on educational achievement for ethnic minorities compared to white natives. Georgiadis and Manning ( 2011 ) look at how the behaviour of ethnic minority communities is changing over time, taking an approach somewhat similar to that used here but with a narrower range of variables.

The main contribution of our study is that we complement and extend the existing literature in two ways: (1) we present evidence on the differences between white natives and each of the main UK ethnic minorities for a wide range of outcomes, some of which haven’t been considered by other studies and (2) we document patterns of change in the behaviour of ethnic minorities over time by comparing the outcomes for the foreign and UK born, with the evidence suggesting convergence of behaviour of all ethnic minorities towards that of white natives.

8.3 Data and background

The main data used in this chapter comes from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the years 2000–2008 inclusive. This is the main UK household survey for the collection of information on economic activity. It is an address-based household sample, with each household being interviewed for five successive quarters and one-fifth being replaced each quarter. The LFS contains information on country of birth but no information on country of parental birth for the UK born. This means that we cannot, strictly speaking, identify first-generation Britons, that is, the children of immigrants. This is different from every other chapter in this book. The standard practice in UK research, which we follow here, is to use self-defined ethnicity as a measure of being a first-generation Briton. Therefore, the analysis of the descendants of immigrants is restricted to ethnic minorities. For the sample period under analysis it is reasonable to assume that almost all of the non-white UK born have at least one immigrant parent, though this assumption will become less true in future years. 3

Table 8.1 reports the sample proportions for natives, first-generation immigrants, and second-generation immigrants for the UK, using the current standard classification of ethnicity in UK surveys. 4 First-generation immigrants represent around 8.6 per cent of the sample, of which half (49.4 per cent) are of white ethnicity, 11 per cent are from India, 7.6 per cent Black African, and 6.5 per cent from Pakistan. The share of second-generation immigrants (those who are UK born but their ethnicity is not White British) in the sample is 6.6 per cent, of which the largest groups are ‘other white’ (27.4 per cent), Indian (14 per cent), Pakistani (13.2 per cent), and Black Caribbean (10.8 per cent).

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008. Proportions are computed using individual sampling weights. The other white category also includes foreign-born white British.

The differences in the fraction of the ethnic minority communities who are UK born largely reflect the fact that they arrived in the UK at different times. Black Caribbean immigration into the UK began earliest (in the 1950s), followed by Pakistanis and Indians, 5 who began to arrive in large numbers in the 1960s. The Bangladeshi and Chinese communities are more recent, so have the lowest proportion of UK born among adults.

In the analysis that follows, we exclude some ethnic groups because the sample sizes are too small or because the groups are too heterogeneous for analysis to be reliable. We exclude the two mixed categories (that are mostly UK born), and the four ‘other’ categories (other white, other Asian, other black and other) as they are very heterogeneous. This leaves us with seven groups for our analysis—white natives, Indian, Pakistani, Black African, Black Caribbean, Bangladeshi, and Chinese.

8.4 Specifications

As in other chapters, the specification we are estimating is the following:

Note that this specification assumes that birth cohort and other regressors (typically age and education) have the same effect on the outcome for all ethnicity and nativity groups. We do have evidence from other research (Georgiadis and Manning, 2009 ) that this is not true but we want to have a consistent specification across all country chapters. Because white natives are the vast majority of all samples, the coefficients on birth cohort and other regressors are going to be mostly influenced by the white native coefficients. The coefficients on the ethnicity and nativity dummies will then be close to what one would get from an Oaxaca decomposition assuming white native coefficients.

8.5 Fertility and marriage

8.5.1 fertility and age at first child.

In this section we consider the two outcomes related to fertility—the number of children and age at first birth. The LFS is not ideal for investigating fertility, as it does not ask retrospective questions about the number of children a woman has had. The best we can do is to exploit its household-based structure to see the number of dependent children who are living with a woman. As children will tend to leave the family home at some point, older women will be seen to be living with fewer children just because their children are older. So, we restrict our sample to women aged between 18 and 40, to capture the youngest ages at which women are likely to have children and an age when few women’s children will have left home. To capture the fact that, for many women in this age group, fertility will not be completed fertility, we include a polynomial in the age of the woman as explanatory variables (these coefficients are not reported). We also control for education (which has a negative effect on fertility). We include dummy variables for each of our ethnic groups, interacted with whether the individual is UK or foreign born. The results in Table 8.2 are reported relative to white UK-born women.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all women aged between 18 and 40 inclusive. Dependent children are all children below 16. Controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

*** significant at 1%,

** significant at 5%.

All ethnic minority groups, with the exception of the Chinese, have higher fertility rates than white native women. But it is also striking that, for all ethnic groups, fertility rates are lower among the UK born compared to the foreign born. For example, foreign-born Pakistani women have 0.83 more children than white natives but UK-born Pakistani women have 0.45 more. For Bangladeshis, the foreign born have 0.98 more children, but the gap falls to 0.31 for the UK born. For Black Africans, the foreign born have 0.4 more children but the gap falls to 0.18 for the UK born. For Indians, fertility among the UK born is not significantly different from the white natives.

Table 8.3 now considers age at first birth, which we compute by taking the current age of the woman minus the age of their oldest child in the household. There are similar problems with this measure as with our measure of number of children but it probably gives the right impression. 6 Table 8.3 reports the estimates and one sees a similar pattern to that seen in Table 8.2 . With the exception of the Chinese, ethnic minority women are younger at first birth than white native women, but the difference is smaller for the UK born. On both these measures, fertility seems to be moving towards the white native pattern.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all women aged between 18 and 40 inclusive. A censored regression model is estimated, controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

8.5.2 Marriage and divorce rates

We next consider marriage patterns (see Berthoud, 2005 , for an existing analysis). In Table 8.4 we report estimates for the probability for currently being married or cohabiting. Our sample is women aged between 18 and 40 so our models can be thought of as estimating the difference in marriage rates across women in these age groups. We control, as before, for age and education. For the foreign born, Table 8.4 shows that all those from South Asian communities are very much more likely to be married than white native women. However, this gap falls dramatically for the UK born, even becoming negative for UK-born Indians and only remaining significantly positive for Pakistanis. Black Caribbean women are less likely to be married than white women, especially for the UK born, where the differential is 23 per cent. One also notes that UK-born Black African women have much lower marriage rates than white natives.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all women aged between 18 and 40 inclusive. A linear probability model is estimated, controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

These differences in marriage rates may indicate different propensities to marry (or cohabit) in the first place, or differences in divorce and separation rates. To investigate the latter, Table 8.5 considers the fraction of ever-married women who are currently divorced or separated. As the married category includes those who have divorced and remarried, this will be an under-estimate of those who have ever divorced but probably gives the right picture. For the foreign born, those from the South Asian communities are significantly less likely to be divorced, whereas the Chinese are as likely to be divorced as white natives. But Black Caribbeans and Black Africans are significantly more likely to be divorced, by more than 15 percentage points for both ethnic groups. However, among the UK born significant differences in divorce/separation rate appear for the Pakistanis, Black Caribbeans, and Black Africans, who are more likely than white women to be divorced. The observation for Pakistanis is particularly interesting but does chime with some who have written that the practice of taking a spouse from Pakistan—which remains very common—results in marriages that do not last.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all non-single women aged between 18 and 40 inclusive. A linear probability model is estimated, controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

These marriage patterns suggest, in line with other evidence, that the South Asian communities are relatively conservative in their marital patterns, with women typically marrying relatively young and divorce being relatively rare, while Black Caribbeans have been much less conservative. One would also see this pattern if one differentiated between cohabitation and marriage—cohabitation would be rare among South Asians and much more common among Black Caribbeans. However, as for fertility, there is a clear indication that differences in behaviour are falling.

8.5.3 Inter-ethnic marriage

Perhaps the most striking way in which communities can converge culturally is by marrying outside their own ethnic group (see also Coleman, 1994 ). Table 8.6 reports the fraction of each community that is married to someone of a different ethnicity. We also report the fraction of individuals who are married to white natives. We report exogamy rates separately for men and women as there are some interesting differences.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008. Proportions are computed using individual sampling weights.

Exogamy rates are lowest for white natives (about 3 per cent), but vary very considerably across ethnic minority communities. Among the foreign born, exogamy rates are lowest for the South Asian communities, but extremely high among the Black groups and the Chinese. For all groups, exogamy rates are much higher among the UK born. Among the South Asians, there is some indication that exogamy with white natives is higher for Indians than the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis (where religion may be more of an obstacle). Exogamy rates for some groups are extremely high—78 per cent of UK-born Chinese women are exogamous, as are 66.7 per cent of UK-born Chinese men, and 62.5 per cent of UK-born Black Caribbean men.

There is a lot of information in Table 8.6 which also does not control for age and education. Table 8.7 reports regression estimates—the patterns are very similar to those reported for Table 8.6 .

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all married individuals. A probit model is estimated, estimates presented are marginal effects, controls include education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

8.5.4 Spousal age gaps

Table 8.8a reports estimates for the age gap between wives and their husbands, which could perhaps be interpreted as a measure of gender relations, with a larger age gap reflecting greater gender inequality. For the foreign born, all ethnic minority groups have a significantly greater spousal age gap than white native women, it being largest among Bangladeshis (4.2 years) and Black Africans (3.2 years), and smallest among the Chinese (1.3 years). However, it is striking that, among the UK born it is only for the Bangladeshis who have a significantly different spousal age gap and even that is much reduced. UK-born Black Caribbeans have a significantly lower spousal age gap than white native women.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all non-single women aged between 18 and 40 inclusive. Controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

One possibility is that this is driven by the higher rates of exogamy among the UK born that we saw in Table 8.6 . However, Table 8.8b shows that this is generally not the case. In Table 8.8b we estimate separate spousal age gap equations for endogamous and exogamous groups with the reference group, in both cases, being all white native women. Although there are some significant differences in spousal age gaps between exogamous and endogamous couples (though sample sizes are small for the exogamous group), it is clear that the declining gaps are present among endogamous couples.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all married individuals. Controls include age, age squared, and education, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

8.6 Educational attainment and the gender gap in education

It is of very considerable interest how the level of education of ethnic minorities compares with that of natives (see Briggs et al ., 2005 ; Modood, 2005 , for other research on the educational attainment of ethnic minorities). The gender gap in education is also a good way of looking for evidence of gender equality. Table 8.9 shows the average age left full- time education for different ethnic groups. This measure of education is not ideal as a given age left full-time education may reflect very different types and quality of education, especially when comparing the foreign and UK born. But, unfortunately, the UK LFS does not adequately code foreign qualifications so the measure we use here is the best available.

Table 8.9 shows that, for men, it is white natives who, on average, left full-time education at the youngest age. The Black Africans, Chinese, and Indians are the best-educated. Among women, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have lower levels of education than white natives, clearly indicating a gender gap in education for these groups. A smaller gender gap is found among the Indians and Chinese.

However, these figures on average age left full-time education hide a lot of variation. The last two columns look at the fraction of communities who left full-time education by the age of 13, that is, who have a very low level of education. This should be impossible for those born and brought up in the UK and one sees essentially zero rates among white natives. The fractions are higher for all ethnic minority communities—and very high for some groups. Most strikingly, 19 per cent of Bangladeshi women and 15.2 per cent of Pakistani women have completed education by the age of 13, so levels of education are low for these groups.

Table 8.10 reports regression estimates for the gender gap in education. In these regressions we also interact the ethnicity and foreign-born dummies with a cohort dummy for whether the respondent was born before or after 1970. The reported coefficients are gender gaps. For all the foreign-born groups except the Black Caribbeans there is a significantly larger gender gap in education than among white natives. However, this gender gap is smaller for later birth cohorts. Among the UK born, the gender gaps are lower and, within this group, lower for those born after 1970 (although small sample sizes make it hard to draw precise conclusions on this).

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all individuals aged 26 and above. Clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

To summarize: the gender gap in educational attainment is larger among Pakistani and Banglasdeshi communities than for the other main ethnic minorities. In large part, this is the result of enormous past differences in the educational attainment of men and women in the countries of origin. But there is marked change, driven in part by changes among both the UK and foreign born, 7 and in part because of the change in the share of the communities who are UK born. Our conclusions here are consistent with those of more qualitative studies (e.g. Ahmad et al ., 2003 ) who conclude that cultures often portrayed as opposed to the education and employment of women seem to be producing growing cohorts of highly motivated young women.

8.7 Female employment

We now turn to an analysis of female employment. For white natives the last 60 years have seen a large growth in female employment rates, though there is some evidence that the growth is now slowing or even stopping. But many of the ethnic minorities come from cultures in which female employment is lower, so female employment is an interesting indicator of cultural change. It may, of course, also reflect economic opportunities.

Table 8.11 reports female employment rates, by ethnicity, place of birth and—because it is so important—marital status and the presence of dependent children. The first row reports employment rates for all women. These are highest for white natives, though Black Caribbeans are only slightly behind. However, the exceedingly low rates for Pakistani (25 per cent) and Bangladeshi (17 per cent) women are quite striking. This is well known (see, for example, Cabinet Office, 2003 , Berthoud and Blekesaune ( 2007 ) and Clark and Drinkwater ( 2007 )). The Equalities Review went so far as to say that the gap in employment rates between Pakistani/Bangladeshi and white women would never be eliminated (Cabinet Office, 2007 ). However, one can also see in Table 8.11 that there is a very large difference in employment rates between the foreign and UK born. For example, UK-born Pakistani women have an employment rate of 45 per cent—still low, but much higher than the rate of 18 per cent for foreign-born Pakistani women. For Bangladeshi women, the figures are 46 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively. There is also some indication that UK-born women from these communities are no longer stopping employment on marriage but waiting until they have children.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all women aged between 25 and 59 inclusive.

The employment rates of Table 8.11 do not control for age or education. Table 8.12 reports estimates from specifications that control for education. For the foreign born, women from all ethnic minorities are significantly less likely to be in employment than white native women, with the largest gaps being for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis. But, these gaps are much reduced among the UK born.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2000–2008, the sample is all women aged between 25 and 59 inclusive. A probit model is estimated, estimates presented are marginal effects, controls include education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

Again, we see evidence of convergence in behaviour. The quantitative conclusions we have drawn here mesh well with the more qualitative studies of Ahmad et al . ( 2003 ) and Aston et al . ( 2007 ).

8.8 Values and beliefs

8.8.1 national identity.

Since spring 2001 the LFS has asked about the national identity of respondents (though not in Northern Ireland), a question motivated by concern that some immigrant groups did not think of themselves as British. The specific question asked is ‘What do you consider your national identity to be? Please choose as many or as few as apply’. There are six possible responses: British, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, and Other. The order in which these responses are listed depends on the country of residence so English is the first option in England, Scottish in Scotland and Welsh in Wales. For the purposes of this chapter we group British, English, Scottish and Welsh into a single ‘British’ category and we will use the term British to refer to any of these answers in what follows.

Table 8.13 reports estimates from a probit equation—the coefficients are differences from white natives. In line with Manning and Roy (2010), and Georgiadis and Manning ( 2009 ) we find that all ethnic minorities are less likely to report a British national identity than white natives but the gap is very much smaller for the UK born (in the 5–10 percentage point range) than among the foreign born (where it is in the 30–60 percentage point range). In line with other studies, it is worth pointing out that the Muslim groups (the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) whose loyalty to Britain is often questioned are the ethnic minorities who are most likely to report a British national identity.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2001–2008, the sample is all individuals aged 16 and above. A probit model is estimated, estimates presented are marginal effects, controls include education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

8.8.2 Religion

Since 2002, the Labour Force Survey has collected data on religion and Table 8.14 documents the proportions of different ethnicities describing themselves as of different religions. We also report the fraction with no religion and the fraction who report that they are practising their religion. The groups from the Indian sub-continent and Black Africans remain very religious, as very few report having no religion compared, for example, to the 56.6 per cent share of individuals reporting no religion among the Chinese. The most religious are the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who are overwhelmingly Muslim. 8 These groups are also much more likely to be practising their religion.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2002–2008 for religious denomination and LFS 2002–03 for whether practising religion, the sample is all individuals aged 16 and above.

Table 8.15 reports estimates for the differences in the proportions who are practising their religion. In line with Table 8.14 , all the South Asian and Black groups are more religious than white natives, with the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis standing out as being the most religious. There is evidence of less religiosity among the UK born than the foreign born, although the decline is noticeably less marked for Pakistanis.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2002–2003, the sample is all individuals aged 16 and above. A probit model is estimated, estimates presented are marginal effects, controls include a dummy for whether the individual is female, education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

What this suggests is that, while there is some evidence of a trend towards lower rates of religiosity among all the ethnic minorities studied here, the trend is less marked for Pakistanis than for other groups. This is perhaps consistent with the evidence in Bisin et al . ( 2007 ) that Muslims are more serious about their faith than adherents to other religions, although the Muslim Bangladeshis do show a marked decline in religiosity for the UK born.

8.8.3 Language

If one has problems with the English language, it is likely to be very hard to assimilate into British culture and one is very likely to remain economically disadvantaged. The LFS asks 9 whether English is the first language at home and, if some other language other than English, Welsh, Gaelic, or Ullans is spoken, whether the respondent has language difficulties with work and education. We code an individual as reporting language difficulties if they report problems with either work or education.

In our analysis we assume that no white natives have language problems. 10 We also assume the same for Black Caribbeans, the vast majority of whom come from English-speaking islands. Table 8.16 reports rates of using English at home for the other groups. Only 11 per cent of foreign-born Bangladeshis and 19 per cent of foreign-born Pakistanis use English at home, compared to 30 per cent of foreign-born Indians and Chinese and 47 per cent of Black Africans. For all ethnic minorities the proportions rise very markedly for the UK born, though a sizeable minority continue to use a language other than English at home.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2002 second quarter, 2003 second quarter, and 2006 third quarter, the sample is all individuals aged 16 or above who are not white natives or Black Caribbeans, as all individuals with either ethnicity speak English at home. A linear probability model is estimated, the constant term is not included in estimation, controls include education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

Table 8.17 presents estimates of the proportions reporting difficulties with English. Among the foreign born, 22 per cent of Bangladeshis, 16 per cent of Pakistanis, 15 per cent of Chinese, and 10 per cent of Indians and Black Africans report difficulties. In many ways these differences reflect differences in educational attainment reported earlier in the chapter in Table 8.9 . Among the UK born these proportions become dramatically smaller, even though, as Table 8.16 shows, a large fraction do not use English as a first language at home. However, this perhaps comes as no surprise given that education is in English.

Note: Data source is the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2002 second quarter, 2003 second quarter, and 2006 third quarter, the sample is all individuals aged 16 and above who are not white natives or Black Caribbeans, as all individuals with either ethnicity speak English at home. A linear probability model is estimated, the constant term is not included in estimation, controls include education, age, and age squared, clustered standard errors at the individual level in parentheses,

8.9 Conclusion

This chapter has compared the behaviours of the largest ethnic minorities in Britain with white natives across a wide, though not exhaustive, range of indicators. In all these dimensions there are significant differences across ethnic minorities some of which are well-established in the literature, as, for example, the strikingly low employment rates for Pakistani and Bangladeshi women but there are other differences less well-documented. An example of the latter is the finding that the Muslim minorities (the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis) are more likely to report a British National identity compared to other ethnic minority communities both among the foreign and UK born. Moreover, another striking common pattern that emerges is the extent to which differences in behaviours between ethnic minorities and white natives tend to be less pronounced for the UK than the foreign born. This indicates a general pattern of cultural integration, something perhaps not surprising to those who study the topic but not the impression one might gain from public discourse on the subject. The rate of cultural integration is faster for some variables than others—it is probably religion that shows the slowest rate. This has the implication that within religions, behaviours are changing so that what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim or Hindu is changing over time.

It is an important question whether, in future years, this process of convergence will continue until behaviours are the same or whether permanent differences will remain. Statistical analysis of data inevitably can only tell us about the past. But it is clear that there are very powerful forces that are acting to change the behaviour of immigrant communities once they are in the UK and it is not unreasonable to guess that these will continue into the future.

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There is also an enormous literature, which we do not seek to summarize here, on other countries—see Adsera and Chiswick ( 2007 ) for an interesting comparison of European countries.

Information on parental country of birth can be identified in the LFS for individuals who live in the same household as their parents. This is the case only for 40 per cent of adults (aged 16 and above), UK-born non-whites in the LFS 2000–2008 inclusive. However, among individuals in the latter group with information on parental country of birth, 80 per cent have at least one parent born outside the UK.

There are 15 categories after 2001 and 13 beforehand, the extra two groups being two extra mixed ethnicity categories. Table 8.1 reports the 13 categories of the earlier classification.

This is the case for adults only, whereas if one also considers children then Bangladeshis have the third highest proportion of UK-born.

One could use a censored regression model for those women who, when observed, have not given birth.

Changes among the foreign born might be the result of the changes in the source countries discussed above, but another factor that might be important is the changing selection of immigrants into the UK.

It is hard to know from this data whether the non-Muslims have converted or were brought up that way, as there are small religious minorities in both countries.

This is only for one quarter every three years, so sample sizes are much reduced for the analysis that follows.

In doing this we ignore the fact that a non-negligible fraction of the white native population do have literacy problems. However, we have little choice as the LFS does not ask the language difficulty question to those who report using English, Welsh, Gaelic, or Ullans at home.

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Robert Jenrick calls for nationality data scheme to prevent UK ‘importing crime’

Ex-immigration minister proposes bill amendment to collate visa and asylum status of people convicted in England and Wales

The nationality, visa and asylum status of people convicted of a criminal offence should be recorded to ensure the UK is not “importing crime”, the former immigration minister Robert Jenrick has said.

In an amendment to the government’s criminal justice bill, Jenrick proposed that recording this data could help strengthen immigration and visa policies.

Ministers would present a report to parliament each year detailing the nationality, visa status and asylum status of every person convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous 12 months under the amendment.

Jenrick said this greater transparency would aid debates about legal and illegal immigration, which are “hindered by a lack of data”.

“We cannot hope to fix our immigration system without understanding the problem. The national debate on legal and illegal migration is hindered by a lack of data on the fiscal, economic and societal impacts of migration,” Jenrick told the Telegraph .

“There is mounting concern that the UK is importing crime, particularly violent crime, sexual assaults and drug production. We need to have transparency so the public knows what’s happening and policy can be formulated accordingly.”

Rishi Sunak has been facing mounting pressure to cut immigration figures in the UK and over his Rwanda bill.

On Friday, Jenrick told GB News that the prime minister “didn’t want to talk about” curbing legal immigration when he and the former home secretary Suella Braverman repeatedly tried to raise the issue – a claim contested by Downing Street sources. The Conservative MP for Newark continued: “I think that the prime minister, like others, took the view that legal migration didn’t matter and that Brexit, if it was anything, was about taking back control but not bringing down the numbers.”

Sunak has previously promised to “do what is necessary” to bring net immigration down.

The government is introducing a range of restrictions in an effort to cut the number of people legally arriving in Britain, including a ban on overseas care workers bringing family dependants to the UK and increasing the salary threshold for skilled workers to £38,700.

Last year Jenrick resigned over the Rwanda bill after it was revealed the legislation did not allow the government to override the international laws that have stopped the government sending asylum seekers to central Africa.

He said it would not work and needed to go further in setting aside human rights law if it was to have a chance of getting the Rwanda scheme to work.

Jenrick’s new proposal has been backed by 25 MPs, including Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg and Robert Buckland.

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He said the US and Denmark had a similar approach to tackling immigration as both countries had developed proposals to process asylum claims offshore.

“An open immigration system is creating serious problems in communities, but without data, we can’t have an informed debate,” he said.

“The Danes think similarly to us. They were the ones looking at third-country processing agreements. I don’t think anyone can suggest they are not compliant with international laws, yet they are rightly adopting a robust and fair approach.

“Anything that makes us more efficient in the way we process claims to sift out people whose presence would be a detriment to our country should be considered.”

Among MPs backing the plan are the Conservative former ministers Andrea Jenkyns, Sir Simon Clarke, Neil O’Brien, Jonathan Djanogly, Sir Desmond Swayne, Sarah Dines, Sir James Duddridge, Heather Wheeler and Caroline Johnson.

• Immigration and asylum
• Robert Jenrick
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Trump is using the murder of a woman to further his anti-immigration agenda. Here’s what to know

Ruby garcia, 25, was shot dead in michigan last month. now her death is being used as part of the former president’s campaign to return to the white house, article bookmarked.

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In a rally speech on Tuesday afternoon in Grand Rapids , Michigan , Donald Trump used the recent murder of a young woman to criticise President Joe Biden ’s border policies.

As part of his campaign for president, Mr Trump has used incendiary rhetoric about the US-Mexico border, migrants and crime to promote his anti- immigration border policies and stoke fear about the current state of the border.

In doing so on Tuesday, Mr Trump spoke about Ruby Garcia, a 25-year-old Michigan resident who law enforcement officials say was murdered by 25-year-old Brandon Ortiz-Vite, a man from Mexico who Garcia was romantically involved with.

Ortiz-Vite was in the United States illegally, a fact that several conservatives have used to broadly claim that the people crossing the US-Mexico border are dangerous and blame President Biden for allowing them in.

But several politicians are criticising Mr Trump and his allies for appearing to capitalise on the death of a young person to make a political point.

Even Garcia’s sister posted on social media asking reporters to stop using Garcia’s story to turn it into “political bull****”.

Donald Trump is making his stance on immigration a key part of his re-election bid

On 22 March, Garcia was found dead on the shoulder of US-131 at Leonard Street in Grand Rapids having sustained multiple gunshot wounds. State troopers said a preliminary investigation indicated foul play was suspected.

Garcia’s family told local news outlet News 8 Wood TV that her death was shocking because she was a peaceful and private person.

They described her as someone who always made other people laugh, was passionate about travelling and who loved plants. The 25-year-old worked at a local greenhouse and was one of five siblings.

During the investigation, law enforcement officials tracked Garcia’s stolen vehicle to a residential area north of South Haven and determined the man she was romantically involved with, Brandon Ortiz-Vite, was a person of interest.

Ortiz-Vite, 25, contacted police the day after to set up questioning. He told police he shot Garcia multiple times during an argument and dropped her body on the side of the road, driving away in her vehicle.

He was charged with felony murder, open murder, carjacking, carrying a concealed weapon and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony and is currently being held at the Kent County Jail. 

Ortiz-Vite is a Mexican citizen and had entered the United States unlawfully sometime before May 2019 but received approval for deferred actions under the DACA programme, a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in a statement.

His status under DACA expired in May of 2019 but after he was arrested on charges related to driving while intoxicated in August of 2020 he was arrested by Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) and in September 2020, an immigration judge ordered his removal.

Some time between then and now, Ortiz-Vite re-entered the US without inspection by an immigration official, an ICE spokesperson said. Upon his arrest in connection to the murder of Garcia, ICE officials lodged an immigration detainer with the Kent County Jail.

But Ortiz-Vite’s immigration status has become the talking point of the tragic death of Garcia – much like the conversation around 22-year-old Laken Riley’s death.

Senate candidate Kari Lake unfoundedly stated that Garcia’s death was the result of Mr Biden’s “catch-and-release-policy” and used Garcia’s death to promote her border policies.

Texas Representative Lance Gooden said President Biden “let [Garcia’s] killer back into the United States” despite no confirmation from authorities regarding when Ortiz-Vite re-entered.

Michigan Representative Elissa Slotkin told CNN it was “gruesome” of Mr Trump and his allies to use the “domestic violence homicide” for political purposes. She went on to criticise them for failing to enact real change with the bipartisan legislation that included measures to “secure” the border.

“The thing that no one is missing is that for all the talk that the former president and his allies have about the border and ‘all we need to do secure the border’ they will not let us vote on a bipartisan package the Republicans presented a few weeks ago,” Ms Slotkin said.

Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, where Mr Trump was speaking, acknowledged that there was a “real problem on our southern border” but pointed out that the former president had sunk a bipartisan deal to increase security there, apparently so that he could keep campaigning on the issue.

She said: "There was a solution on the table. It was actually the former president that encouraged Republicans to walk away from getting it done. I don't have a lot of tolerance for political points when it continues to endanger our economy and, to some extent, our people as we saw play out in Grand Rapids recently."

Michigan state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks said in a statement that Garcia’s death “is a tragic instance of domestic violence, and is made even more tragic when it is co-opted by those wishing to score political points by stoking fear, xenophobia, and division.”

“We know that immigrants (of all statutes) have contributed in ways too numerous to count as parents, business owners, neighbors, employees, church members, community leaders, and friends,” Ms Brinks added.

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