Memorandum by Dr Bridget Anderson, Oxford
University
DEFINITIONS AND
CONTEXT
1. In the past there has been some differentiation
between "immigrant" and "migrant", with the
latter being used to refer to people whose stay is anticipated
to be temporary. However, the terms are increasingly used interchangeably.
In considering impacts of immigration it is important to be clear
about how one is defining "immigrant".
(a) Immigrant is sometimes defined as "foreign
born" thereby allowing for the fact that one can be at the
same time a British citizen and an "immigrant". Thus
while arguments tend to be couched in terms of individuals being
either British or immigrant, this definition potentially
recognizes that such a dichotomous presentation oversimplifies
the case. However, in analytical practice one's impact on the
economy is always counted as that of an "immigrant"
even when, in law, one is a British national. Moreover, there
is some divergence between what is popularly understood by "immigrant"
and the group captured by this definition: Prince Philip, Cliff
Richard, Joanna Lumley are all immigrants by this definition.
(b) The use of terms such as "second
generation immigrant" further confuses the matter. This implies
that even those born in the UK to British citizens are in some
ways an "immigrant" and blurs the line between "immigrant"
and "ethnic minority". Only those who are ethnic minorities
can be identified as "second generation immigrants"
in the Labour Force Survey, for example, which does not ask parents'
country of birth. Those concerned with identifying the economic
impact of "second generation immigrants" must look at
the impact of ALL second generation immigrants, in order not to
give a partial picture. But the limitations of data mean that
this is extremely difficult and in practice this is rarely done.
The term "second generation immigrant" therefore tends
to be racialised, both in research and in common parlance and
should be treated with caution.
(c) Immigrant may be more tightly defined
as persons who are not UK citizens, and who do not have the "right
of abode" in the UK (ie are not British subjects). Those
people who have Indefinite Leave to Remain and no employment restrictions
as well as EU nationals count as immigrants under this definition,
however long they have been in the UK. However the "foreign
born" who have British citizenship are counted as British
nationals.
In this submission I am using immigrant/migrant
in the terms described in the last of these definitions, as this
captures some of the complexity around the term without getting
bogged down in the detail. It should be noted that this definition
also allows for including those non-UK nationals who have the
right to work, but who are not commonly considered in discussions
on migrant workers—the spouses of work permit holders, students,
or working holidaymaker visa holders for example.
2. Migrants are not disembodied, they are
men and women and of different ages and ethnicities. This can
be important in appreciating demand for labour especially in labour
markets that are highly segmented by age, gender and/or ethnicity.
3. In considering the nature of the demand
for migrant workers one must first consider the question of whether
there is in fact a demand for migrant labour per se.
There may be a demand for a certain type of worker (for example,
with particular skills or qualities, "flexible", low
waged etc), who in practice is a migrant, but who in theory could
equally be a UK citizen. This is not to be equated with a demand
for people of a particular immigration status (including those
who are illegally resident) though the two may also be related.
Why do employers want to hire immigrants?
4. Reasons given for persistent vacancy
rates and recruitment difficulties are clearly sectorally dependent.
It is important to distinguish between skills shortages such as
some construction trades, or social workers, for example and labour
shortages. The two can be confused, sometimes because of different
ideas of what constitutes "skill" (see point 8 below).
On labour shortages research conducted by COMPAS in May 2005 on
the employment of Central and East European nationals found that
"salary not attractive" was given as one factor in recruitment
difficulties by 40% of hospitality employers surveyed, and 46%
of agriculture and food processing employers (it should be noted
that this survey was not representative).[19]
77% of A8 nationals who applied for registration between May 2004
and June 2007 earned £4.50-£5.99 an hour.
5. Other factors given by employers to account
for recruitment difficulties include hours (unpredictable, too
long, too short, or anti-social), the location of work, and having
to live in tied accommodation. One might characterize these kinds
of factors as to do with "work life balance". That is,
they feature in work that is difficult to balance with family
or social commitments or pleasures. Relatively "new"
migrants, who have left communities behind and who have not yet
established themselves in the UK—or who are simply planning
to make as much money as they can and return—might well
be more prepared or required to work in situations where poor
work-life balance is systemic as compared to many UK nationals,
particularly those with families to care for. (Some UK nationals
of course uproot and may take up similar jobs in foreign countries,
as gap year students or working holidaymakers among others.) Certain
types of immigration status that are temporary or that require
part time working may also predispose migrants to work in this
kind of job. It should be noted that these statuses are not necessarily
formally represented as migration for employment. For example,
a working holidaymaker visa holder may work for 12 months of their
allotted two year stay and a student may work for 20 hours a week
in term time and 40 hours out of term time. In 2005 284,000 students
were given leave to enter, and 56,600 working holidaymakers. All
these would be non-EU nationals. These numbers are not insignificant
when compared with the 91,500 of work permits granted.
6. Employers in most sectors present their
employment of migrants as not just a "good enough" solution
to otherwise unmanageable recruitment difficulties, nor providers
of labour for basic jobs. They frequently claim that they are
`good workers'. Employers at times publicly attest to what
several academic studies have found that a perceived determinant
of why they employ migrants is "work ethic". Migrants
may even be contrasted with UK nationals, who are characterized
as lazy and unreliable. This difference tended to be explained
by references to "culture", attitude and poverty (Anderson
et al 2006; Matthews and Ruhs 2007).
7. These notions of "work ethic"
are highly subjective and potentially simplistic. Indeed it is
interesting to see them feature in otherwise scientific analyses
of immigration. I would note firstly that employers are not necessarily
comparing like with like. Indeed a further observed advantage
of migrant labour is that migrants are often high quality workers
for low waged work. That is, the UK worker who might, on paper,
do a particular job, is not the equivalent, in education for example,
of the migrant worker. This certainly seems to be the case for
some A8 nationals. For example a survey of 120 migrants doing
entry level jobs in the hospitality sector, found that more than
one third had tertiary level education. It is interesting to note
that this advantage is also attributed to the employment of students
(Canny 2002). The impact of EU Enlargement on the student labour
market (which of course itself includes many foreign nationals)
has not, to my knowledge, been researched, but it is here that
I would anticipate any displacement being most obvious.
8. Employers also value "soft skills",
some of which may be encompassed in the term "work ethic".
Indeed this might also help account for the common elision between
skills and labour shortages. Work which is "low skilled"
in terms of its NVQ level requirements, may still be better performed
by people who have good people skills, or who are good team workers.
Moreover, "low skilled" does not mean that "anyone"
can do it, or that one can simply replace one worker with another.
For example I suspect that many parents would not be happy having
a redundant ex-steel worker being a live-in nanny for their toddler.
An interesting example is the recent development in the senior
care workers' permit. Care assistants who had entered the UK on
work permits and were given one or four year visas had (in some
cases unexpectedly) to apply for extensions to their permits following
the April 2007 change in requirements for ILR from four to five
years. Their skills and experience level were no longer considered
high enough to warrant such a renewal and applications were refused.
The Border and Immigration Agency conceded as a transitional measure
that the skills criteria would be waived, but that minimum salaries
must be increased to £7.02 an hour. There is no national
or UK pay agreement in the social care sector and many SCW posts
are paid at or slightly above the NMW. Residential and nursing
homes retorted that a pay rise was not possible unless the Local
Authority rates for care provision were concomitantly increased.
They also argued that many SCW currently in the UK who were now
unable to renew their visas had developed close relationships
with residents, such that they could not be simply "replaced"
by an A8 national (as policy proposed).
9. Highly flexible labour markets loosen
the relation between worker and employer. While this means, crudely
speaking, that hiring and firing becomes easier, it can also cause
problems for retention. While attention has been paid to recruitment
difficulties with respect to demand for migrant labour, there
has been much less work on retention, and labour turnover is typically
not costless. Theoretically in low waged, low skilled and de-regulated
labour markets, workers have every incentive to move if a better
offer comes along, and the control employers exercise over labour
mobility may be limited. Under such conditions the workings of
immigration status can offer employers certain advantages
(Anderson 2007a). These are most commonly portrayed as the advantages
of physical and abusive control exercised by profiteering and
exploitative employers over "illegal" or "trafficked"
immigrants. While this does indeed happen it is important to recognize
that this picture is rather simplistic. Firstly the debate on
"illegal immigration" is mired in confusion about what
actually the phenomenon is. Most particularly there is a confusion
between illegal residence (that is people who entered illegally
or who have overstayed their visa), and illegal working.
That is, the people who are residing legally but who are breaking
their so-called "conditions of stay". Examples would
be au pair visa holders who have taken on additional cleaning
work, or students working in excess of 20 hours a week in term
time (Ruhs and Anderson 2006). Moreover this stereotype relies
on employers having perfect knowledge of migrant workers' statuses.
Not only may this not be the case—as recognized in the statutory
defence against employing illegally—but it underestimates
the range of ways in which employers can choose not to know: thus
an employer might suspect that a language school is bogus, but
fail to investigate.
10. There is a surprising inattention to
the possibility that migrants may be preferred because of their
immigration status. Most particularly being on a work permit
or other type of visa can limit labour market mobility which can
be of advantage to employers in flexible labour markets where
labour mobility is particularly highly contested. Employers do
not have to resort to threatening illegal residents with discovery.
Migrants who are working legally on permits or through schemes
will have legally enforceable constraints on their movement, thereby
facilitating retention. The removal of this constraint on A8 labour
was of concern to users of Seasonal Agricultural Workers, and
au pairs prior to EU Enlargement. It is one of the main reasons
that employers of domestic labour, particularly carers, give for
hiring non-EU nationals. Thus in certain circumstances, rather
than acting as a mechanism for protecting labour markets, certain
types of immigration statuses may make migrant labour more attractive
to employers who are concerned with retention.
11. Employers may not actively choose migrant
workers, but may just "end up" doing so. For agency
workers, for example, it might be that these are simply the workers
provided by the agency. That is, migrant working may be a result
of recruitment processes. The WRS data suggests that a large number
of A8 nationals are working as agency workers.
12. The role of migrants in providing care
and domestic services is frequently overlooked in considerations
of the economic impact of immigration. According to the Dept of
Health/Department for Education and Skills in 2006 the vacancy
rate in the social care sector as a whole was double that for
all types of industrial commercial and public employment. In London
the vacancy rate for social care posts (defined as the number
of vacant posts as a percentage of the establishment) was 14.8
and employers routinely complain that there is a "lack of
recruits" from the UK and the European Union.
13. The numbers of private employers is
difficult to estimate, and the nature of services provided to
private households is diverse and can include widely jobs from
childcare to garden maintenance, answering the door to cleaning
the toilet. In the UK nearly one in three households with two
people working employ domestic workers. There are two main types
of visas for work in private households, the au pair visa
and the visa for domestic workers accompanying their employers.
However migrants with a range of statuses work in this sector.
Migrants working in these sectors are very hidden, as many are
likely to be working in breach of conditions or informally (Anderson
2007b).
14. Increasingly the focus is on the provision
of care for older people within the context of the ageing population.
The unsustainability of relying on unpaid mid-life family labour
when women are in full time in employment, has been recognized,
but equally the high cost of formal eldercare can make other solutions
untenable. Domestic services are critical to the working of nearly
half of those households employing domestic workers. In the UK
there is a planned expansion of "direct payments for care",
along the lines of other European states. In all states these
changes have had, and will continue to have impacts both on the
labour market for care and on individual care relationships. They
may also foster the development of an informal market for care
in which migrants, and particularly undocumented migrants, may
be regarded as desirable workers. The economic impact of this
kind of employment is likely to go unremarked, but it is important
in facilitating employment, particularly female employment.
5 November 2007
19 See www.compas.ox.ac.uk/changingstatus. Back
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