Millions of people set out every year from the country of their birth to start afresh:
but of all workers, migrants are among the most vulnerable, and the global recession
has played havoc with their hopes and dreams. Fifty million jobs could be lost by the end
of the year.
So migrants have a stark choice: between the life they’ve come to know, with all its
hardships, and the life they left behind. Should they stay or should they go?
Anna and Mariusz Glod are the new generation of migrants. Life half a million of their
countrymen, they took advantage of Poland’s accession to the European Union in 2004, giving
them freedom to work in the UK. Four years later, almost one and a half million Eastern
European – or A8 – migrants had arrived.
Worldwide, migrants will number 214 million by 2010 – three percent of the world’s
inhabitants, up from 190 million five years ago.
Polish people have become the UK’s biggest foreign population. So, increasingly retailers
target that market. And reminders of home are just one of the attractions.
(Mariusz Glod) In Poland, you have to work many hours to
get good money, and here just some hours before you have free time to do whatever you want.
(Anna Glod) We would like to start life together because
in Poland, I was living with my parents and Mariusz with his parents; I thought maybe
I could find a better job in England than in Poland.
But in common with the majority of migrants around the world, 80% of Eastern European
arrivals work in lower-skilled jobs. Anna studied finance and administration in Poland,
but in the UK she works in the office at a warehouse.
Mariusz worked at a Honda supplier for two years, but the carmaker’s four-month shut-down
early in 2009 ended that. Now he too has a job in a warehouse.
The recession has had a marked effect on migrants arriving in host countries: worldwide the
downturn is dramatic. In the UK, at the peak three years ago, around 37,000 Poles, for
example, were arriving every three months. It’s now around 12,000. But the flow hasn’t
dried up.
(Prof. David Metcalfe, Migration Advisory Committee)
The numbers coming in are larger than the numbers going out. So there’s a net balance,
a net inflow in favour of immigration, but that net flow is getting smaller, and that’s
true for workers from the EU and from the workers from outside the EU.
Chris Colaco came from Goa in South Western India a few months ago.
He lost his job with a travel agency there, when tourism slumped. He set off to join his
extended family in the British town of Swindon, armed with a Portuguese EU passport from the
old colonial rulers, and a vision of the future.
(Chris Colaco) Ah my hopes! Firstly, I’d love to take a
good job, but it’s the recession, and people lose jobs. First priority is to have a stable
job, I’d like a house and then bring my wife and my kid, and give them a good life.
It’s very, very difficult. Every day in the morning, I go to town and to the agencies
and when I go there, they say at the moment it’s very quiet. It’s very tough to get
a job.
Unemployment tends to be somewhat higher among migrants than the native population. For now,
Chris has a temporary job, and spends time helping his uncle Angelo.
Angelo de Mello is a qualified electrical engineer, handy for helping his brother-in-law
renovate his house. He too has more skills than he’s being paid for. By day, he’s
arranging mortgages in a brokerage, and the recession has slowed business right down.
So occasional evening playing music are a welcome distraction for both nephew and uncle.
(Angelo de Mello) Starting off with my job itself, I take half
as much income as I would have three years ago, so things are very tight on that end.
Next up, even my music has suffered over the last couple of
years – played three gigs a month, that has gone down to one gig a month. No money
from that. For the rest of the family, the brother-in-law just bought a house, got keys
in September, all of us helping, then he found out that he lost his job last week-end. Nothing’s
secure any more in this country.
When Angelo arrived in Swindon, in the South West, it was called Britain’s most productive
town. It’s home to Honda and a host of other big employers, and when the economy boomed,
it attracted thousands of migrants who now form ten percent of the population.
Goans form Swindon’s biggest migrant community. There are eight thousand – more than the
other migrant groups from the sub-continent, and the largest enclave outside Goa itself.
Some arrived with their families – and Portuguese citizenship – in the last decade. Others
came via East Africa, with British passports.
Konkani is their first language, but their second is English, which has helped Goans
integrate into British society.
(Eddie Fernandes) In Goa, the idiom of instruction is largely
in English especially in catholic schools so when they come here, they’re able to
settle in, they have likes and dislikes the same as many other people, they like the odd
tipple after work in the pub. They go to restaurants and eat the same food.
The Polish community has been rooted in Swindon for over sixty years. Some of the regulars
at the Polish Day Centre served in the British armed forces in World War II and stayed on
afterwards.
Others were transported from Eastern Poland to Siberia and came to the UK as political
refugees. They feel their history separates them from the newer arrivals.
(Bronia Miotla) Maybe after a few years, they’ll think differently,
but, at the moment, sorry to say but we haven’t got a lot in common. They think differently
than we do, we belong here and we feel Polish, but I think we belong here, in this country.
The younger Poles have more choice about where they go. Take Zbyshek Lukasiak, back in Warsaw.
He’s often prompted by economic motives, and expectations about lifestyle. But in a
recession, what will his next step be?