After the lively debate on understanding and assessing risk, I am going to return today to another favourite theme of mine - migrant workers. Or more precisely, the research undertaken into the migrant worker phenomenon in the UK. This is sparked by two stories in the press yesterday - one on research undertaken for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and one on the needs of strawberry farmers.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation story was about the publication of a study taking a longitudinal view of migrant workers and their desire to settle permanently in the UK. The key finding being that after some time in the country and (with the final phase of field work being done in May 2004) with the Accession states joining the EU, workers were more likely to want to settle in Great Britain.
In a different story, the National Farmers' Union warned that the UK strawberry crop was under threat as there was a shortage of migrant workers in the sector. This was blamed on rising standards of living in Poland and other Eastern European nations.
The juxtaposition of these two stories was fascinating to me - the research story trying to highlight the difficulty of integration and learning the language and getting information on immigration status faced by the migrant workers. While the BBC also tried to introduce a little controversy into the story by questioning whether migrant workers weren't making life more difficult for UK marginal workers. At the same time, there are 2,400 jobs picking strawberries going begging - jobs which the British seem unwilling to take on, and now the "cheap labour" of migrant workers are also staying away from.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation Research was excellent, but took too long to come to light - the researchers from Oxford and Sussex Universities did their last field work (according to the story) in 2004, but other studies by companies such as Mercia Research have done work more recently and reported more quickly. The findings are not new enough to advance the debate adequately, although the aspects that they highlight of limited use of English language learning, integration into British society and the emergence of enclaves are incredibly important. Hence my view that there is bad timing going on here.
Another bit of bad timing was that this story was picked up at the same time as the plight of seasonal food producers, but no one tried to link the two. Well apart from me and in a very small way.
A final thought - it seems to me there will always be the jobs that people don't want to do - fruit picking, shallot planting, waiting tables, cleaning and sweeping, working in food processing factories. In the UK, we have managed to help everyone aspire to not doing these jobs (even if we haven't succeeded in giving them the skills to do other jobs), so once again we need to look to other countries to supply the labour to undertake these roles. However the NFU is finding that the sources of uncomplaining labour in Eastern Europe are now also setting their sights higher - where do we look for the next wave? Or do we accept that sometimes people need to have jobs not careers?
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