Examine the trends in migration since 1900

by karo_lina5931 (student)

Examine the migration trends in the UK since 1900.

Most recent definition of migration is the movement of people from one country or region to another in order to settle permanently, it can be inter, within the society, or international. There are two types of migration; immigration – the movement into an area or society, emigration – movement out of an area or society. Net migration is the difference between the numbers immigration and the numbers emigrating, and is expressed as a net increase or not decrease due to migration.

From 1900 until the Second World War the largest immigrant group to the UK were the Irish, by 1921 the number of Irish-born in Britain was 523,767. Pull factors for the Irish were mainly economic factors such as; the prospect of comparatively well-paid employment in Britain, letters home from family members who had already emigrated, and hope of owning land to grow a farm was the dream of every Irishman. The biggest push factor was to escape from the great famine which took over in mid 19th century. The Home Office estimated that during the 20th century the population of west coast of Scotland rose by 13 per cent, and population of north-west England rose by almost 20%, from 1900 to 1920. However such high migration rates brought consequences with it. The Irish workers were subject to large amounts of prejudice mainly due to the famine which ruled in Ireland. Many British shop-owners have displayed signs outside their shops which quoted “no Irish allowed”. This discrimination was also based on their religion, and anti-Catholic feeling became rife. This affected not only the new immigrant workers, but also Catholics who had lived peacefully in the city for many years. As a result of this discrimination many new laws and policies were made to equalise grounds for the Irish who were seeking jobs in the UK.

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Before the 1980s, there were more people emigrating out of the UK than immigrating into it. For instance in every single year from 1946 to 1978 more people left the UK to settle elsewhere than arrived to live in the UK. The main reason for emigration have been economic both in terms of ‘push’ factors such as the great recession and unemployment in the UK, and even more in terms of ‘pull’ factors such as better opportunities abroad. After 1945, the relatively poor performance of the British economy compared with that of other industrial countries acted as an incentive to emigrate. Also at that time there were schemes to assist passage by which the UK’s government paid part of migration costs played an important role in promoting movement to Old Commonwealth Countries such as Australia or New Zealand. For instance there were assisted passage scheme’s established and operated by the Government of Australia for British migrants who could travel by boat to Australia for just £10. As a consequence of this British migrants were subjects to prejudice and were colloquially called the “ten pound poms” or “ten pound tourists” by citizens of Australia. However, as this was after the Second World War, it also caused labour shortages in the UK; immigration was needed to bring in that extra labour force. As ties with the Polish were made some 157,000 Poles were the first groups allowed to settle in the UK.

More recently the number of overseas students on student visas in the UK has increased significantly, which cause the net migration figures to rise to extremely high levels and therefore become unreliable. Latest figures show that the total net migration is at 216,000 people, almost a half of which come on student visas. Such high numbers of students coming into the UK are mainly due to bogus colleges through which non-EU students obtain their visas. The Home Office said recently that “there has been a big drop in new student visas”, which is largely due to the Government clamping down 500 colleges and taking away their licence to bring in foreign non-EU students, coupled with them threatening to deport thousands of fee-paying overseas students. Universities are now campaigning for students to be taken off immigration totals, which would give a clearer distinction between temporary and permanent migrants. However, already due to the Government’s new visas and cutting the net migration figures policies, there has been a message going out that Britain was not open to overseas students. The Government has failed to recognise that without international students, the UK would not only be poorer economically, it would also be more boring, more insular, and more ignorant of the wider world.