By Sarah Kyambi, Edinburgh University
What happens after free movement ends? This is not an easy question to answer and, as a result, a source of increasing concern to communities and businesses.
Yet, in policymaking terms, the discussion is still in the foothills. We are waiting both for an immigration bill that has been continually postponed and for the Migration Advisory Committee’s final report on the role of European Economic Area (EEA) workers in the UK labour market.
With immigration from the EEA having provided the only labour migration route into lower skilled jobs in the UK, it is critical to understand the options after Brexit.
There is a huge range of immigration schemes worldwide. In the context of current proposals for regulating migration to lower-skilled jobs once free movement ends, research with colleagues from the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow analysed a range of schemes across industrialised countries and investigated migrant decision-making with EEA migrants living in Scotland.
The aim was to understand what types of schemes are best suited to meeting different immigration policy goals and to find out how different policies are likely to affect migrants’ decisions to come to the UK, and to settle here.
READ MORE: Scotland facing loss of key EU workers after Brexit
While more restrictive systems are generally less attractive, this has a greater impact on migrants’ decisions to settle (or stay for the longer term), than it has on initial decisions to migrate. However, although younger, unattached migrants are less deterred by restrictions on their stay and conditions, these are likely to prompt them look at their options elsewhere. If coming to the UK is made more difficult, other English-language destinations become preferable, and many may also decide to simply exercise their free movement rights within the European Economic Area instead.
Discouraging potential migrants, particularly those who want to settle, may be of marginal concern at Westminster where lowering immigration remains an explicit target - and an implicit part of delivering Brexit. Indeed, temporary, seasonal programmes for lower skilled migration appear to be the order of the day. In Scotland, by contrast, discouraging potential migrants matters a great deal.
Given Scotland’s population is ageing more rapidly than south of the border, there are pronounced concerns about maintaining the working age population as well as averting population decline overall. Immigration feeds into that.
As does the role of migrants in sustaining rural and remote communities. Furthermore, while temporary programmes are widespread for lower skilled immigration, they bring their own problems. The associated levels of population churn can be disruptive and difficulties with enforcement arise where underlying labour needs are longer term. We found that immigration programmes need to fit the contexts they address. Lower skilled migration is often given short shrift over the attractions of ‘the brightest and the best’. Yet much-needed and valuable work is done by those in lower skilled jobs and programmes for lower skilled migration include a spectrum of options beyond the temporary and the restrictive.
It may be tempting to view the Scottish Government’s pronouncements on the need for Scotland to have more control over immigration as simply another skirmish in the on-going debate on the constitutional settlement.
But there is merit to the view that, when looking to construct UK’s future immigration system, we should proceed with a fuller consideration of the range of goals to be pursued, a wider understanding of the variety of programmes that could be adopted, and, crucially, factoring in how policies will impact on the decisions of migrants themselves. Other parts of the UK face similar challenges to Scotland: it is time for policy deliberations on immigration to do justice to the complexity of the issues.
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