From pre-Brexit anxieties to post-Brexit policy challenges

Six years after the historic referendum on the UK’s EU membership, serious misconceptions about the EU and Europeans remain. (Mis)understandings about the EU free movement principle, as well as perceptions of Eastern EU nationals stealing jobs, abusing the British welfare system, and/or engaging in anti-social behaviour have dominated mainstream British media and political discussions, accelerating Eurosceptic attitudes. 

Over time, such perceptions and anxieties have evolved into policy challenges that are yet to be addressed properly. The transformation of these pre-Brexit anxieties into post-Brexit policy challenges has been the focus of my work. Here I outline three particularly pertinent policy challenges.

Policy challenge 1: Low-skilled = low-paid = undesirable 

From the early days of the Eastern EU enlargement, there has been a huge rift between how politically problematic EU workers are, and how economically useful they are. Thus, the post-Brexit Points-Based System (PBS) aimed to reduce the alleged over-reliance of sectors of the British economy on Eastern EU workers, despite evidence that overall levels of inward migration from the EU are declining against the backdrop of labour shortages.

Eastern Europeans tend to be overrepresented in the lower end of the labour market, which means that many workers fall outside the PBS remit. These are people who work in agriculture, food processing, and the NHS among others. In other words, key workers. The continuous lack of long-term policy vision for lower paid workers makes them vulnerable to unscrupulous recruitment and employment practices.

For any post-Brexit migration policy to be viable, it must reconcile its internal conflation between low-skilled and low-paid. We need a more flexible definition of skills, which is not reduced to earning potential, but also includes a range of soft skills, as well as the recognition that physical agility is an essential skill for key sectors, such as agriculture.

Policy challenge 2: Robots, not migrants, will pick up your strawberries 

One of the arguments of the Leave campaign was that Britain is over reliant on migrant labour and that Brexit will have the dual benefit of booting out the politically problematic low-paid workers and instead invest in automation, which will increase productivity and growth.

Such post-Brexit utopia have not materialised yet because despite the general fascination with the idea of automation, no government to date has committed to properly invest in it. Such ambiguity has had an impact on the business sector where only 14 % of businesses and 4% of small businesses are currently investing in AI/robotics, the lowest level among the G10 countries.

Moreover, the Covid practice of flying in fruit pickers from the East of the EU, coupled with the lukewarm response to the Pick for Britain campaign, should serve as a warning that achieving some level of automation is imperative for the sector moving forward.

Policy challenge 3: You may or may not be stealing jobs, but will you vote for us? 

Over the past twenty years, British governments have struggled to make head or tail of the complex phenomenon that is intra-EU mobility, with both major parties having played a role in vilifying Eastern Europeans. The narratives promoted by British mainstream media aided the toxic conflation between free movement and uncontrollable immigration.

Now, and somewhat ironically, Brexit has forced all EU nationals in the UK to either settle permanently or leave. Some have decided to leave the UK for good, others have applied for settled status. Others still will apply for British citizenship,which would make them eligible to vote in general elections.

With nearly 6 million applications for settled status prior to the last general election and rising numbers of citizenship applications, none of the main political parties made a serious effort to appeal to these (potential) new constituents.

To make matters even more complicated, the 2021-22 Elections bill further differentiates between Europeans who have arrived before 31 December 2020 (who can still vote in local elections) and those who arrived after this date who cannot do so, unless there is a bilateral agreement between their country of birth and the UK. So far, only Spain, Portugal, Poland, and Luxembourg have signed such agreements.

Thus, there are serious policy risks of disenfranchising EU citizens in the long term, as well as complicating the legal routes to settlement. Moving forward, both Labour and Conservatives need to find an inclusive and sustainable way of engaging these new prospective voters.

Dr Denny Pencheva is a Lecturer in European Politics and Public Policy.