Being (un)settled as citizens and community: post-2004 Polish migrants, Brexit and the legacy of the Parekh report

This article applies the concept of Britain as a community of citizens and a community of communities to the analysis of post-2004 Polish migrants. This concept received its clearest articulation in the 2000 report on The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain chaired by Bhikhu Parekh, which constituted a hallmark of the national debate on multiculturalism. The report is used as an intellectual inspiration to see post-2004 Poles not just as white labour migrants to the UK, but as citizens and community within the multi-ethnic Britain envisaged by Parekh and his co-authors. The discussion draws on a set of qualitative data gathered in the Northern English district of Wakefield following the Brexit vote. The analysis reveals a high degree of local embeddedness of Polish migrants both as citizens and community, which involves civil relations across ethnic lines and the sense of shared commitment. This inclusion is however undermined by the pattern of paid employment, language difficulties and arbitrariness of the Brexit state, which interviewees experienced both as a community and as individual citizens. While following the dialectical frames set by the report, this article expands notions of the boundary of multi-ethnic Britain by putting this ethnic and post-EU enlargement group within its map

The worker branch in Yorkshire as a way of organising Polish migrants: exploring the process of carving out diasporic spaces within the trade union structure

While post-2004 Polish labour migration to the UK was underpinned by diasporic spaces instrumental in facilitating social and labour market adjustments, the institutions of the host society such as trade unions also sought to establish links with migrants. The analysis of interactions between UK unions and EU migrants focused on organising strategies and specific provisions such as English language learning. However, the discussion tended to ignore the impacts of diasporic influences, from ethnicity and native languages of migrants to the outcomes of migrant worker organising. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative data, this paper discusses how Polishness, in its ethnic, historic and linguistic manifestations, has affected the internal dynamics of a migrant worker organisation created by a major UK trade union. The explicit acknowledgement of diasporic particularities of post-2004 Polish migrants not only enabled labour organising activities but also shaped the migrant worker organisation from within. The strength of diasporic influences on one hand and the chosen form of union organising on the other created conditions for the development of diasporic spaces within the institution of the host society

Not Quite Right: Representations of Eastern Europeans in ECJ Discourse

Although the increasing responsiveness of the Court of Justice of the European Union (the ‘ECJ’) jurisprudence to western Member States’ concerns regarding Central and Eastern European (‘CEE’) nationals’ mobility has garnered academic attention, ECJ discourse has not been scrutinised for how it approaches the CEE region or CEE movers. Applying postcolonial theory, this article seeks to fill this gap and to explore whether there are any indications that ECJ discourse is in line with the historical western-centric inferiorisation of the CEE region. A critical discourse analysis of a set of ECJ judgments and corresponding Advocate General opinions pertaining to CEE nationals illustrates not only how the ECJ adopts numerous discursive strategies to maintain its authority, but also how it tends to prioritise values of the western Member States, while overlooking interests of CEE movers. Its one-sided approach is further reinforced by referring to irrelevant facts and negative assumptions to create an image of CEE nationals as socially and economically inferior to westerners, as not belonging to the proper EU polity and as not quite deserving of EU law’s protections. By silencing CEE nationals’ voices, while disregarding the background of east/west socio-economic and political power differentials and precariousness experienced by many CEE workers in the west, such racialising discourse normalises ethnicity- and class-based stereotypes. These findings also help to contextualise both EU and western policies targeting CEE movers and evidence of their unequal outcomes in the west, and are in line with today’s nuanced expressions of racisms. By illustrating the ECJ’s role in addressing values pertinent to mobile CEE individuals, this study facilitates a fuller appreciation of the ECJ’s power in shaping and reflecting western-centric EU identity and policies. Engaging with such issues will not only allow us to better appreciate—and question—the ECJ’s legitimacy, but might also facilitate a better understanding of power dynamics within the EU. This study also makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions. It expands (and complicates) the application of postcolonial theory to contemporary intra-EU processes, while illustrating the usefulness of applying critical discourse analysis to exploring differentiation, exclusion, subordination and power within legal language

Understanding the Connections between Temporary Employment Agencies and Migration

This article looks at the relationship between employment agencies and migration. The connections between employment agencies and migrants have long been recognized. However, many have suggested that the relationship between agencies and migrants is changing. Drawing on four research studies by the authors, conducted between 2005 and 2012, the article looks at three key issues: the use of employment agencies by migrants; the strategies of employment agencies towards migrants; and the outcomes for migrants associated with working through employment agencies. The article finds that agencies are adapting their strategies towards migrants, but that the outcomes of these strategies are often negative for migrants

The UK National Health Service’s migration infrastructure in times of Brexit and COVID-19: Disjunctures, continuities and innovations

The COVID‐19 pandemic and Brexit were separate yet inter‐related developments which affected the British National Health Service (NHS). The UK's state‐funded health sector had historically relied on migrant labour and depended on a migration infrastructure designed to solve its nursing labour shortages. The analysis of primary qualitative and secondary quantitative data shows that the NHS migration infrastructure increased its orientation towards Asia to compensate for the effects of Brexit. The paper reveals how the persistent use of temporary visas along with conditional contractual arrangements has led to various exclusions for migrant nurses and midwives. These data also demonstrate how international travel restrictions associated with COVID‐19 created temporary obstacles for nurses' inflows. Alongside Brexit, this has also resulted in an increase in outflows amongst EU health workers. The article identifies the development of migrant support infrastructure amongst Filipino and Indian nurses as a major COVID‐19 linked innovation