The Lifeboat Politics of Immigration

By Dr Ala Sirriyeh, Lecturer in Sociology  

On Tuesday the Prime Minister, David Cameron, announced his government's plans to introduce increased restrictions on welfare entitlements for EU migrants living in the UK; ostensibly in preparation for the lifting of work restrictions for Romanians and Bulgarians in the UK from January 2014. If these plans go ahead, EU migrants will not be able to claim benefits for their first three months in the UK and benefit payments will stop after six months if these migrants are not deemed to have a 'genuine' chance of getting a job. Fines are set to quadruple for employers found to be paying less than the minimum wage, while EU migrants found sleeping rough will face deportation. On Wednesday evening Channel 4 news visited Margate in Kent in search of local residents' reactions to Cameron's new policy. One man they spoke to explained his support for the new restrictions by comparing the UK to a lifeboat. He asserted it was not a case of being racist or xenophobic, but rather a matter of numbers and balancing the books. Too many migrants arriving would lead to the UK (the lifeboat) sinking. In times of austerity tough decisions about our survival need to be made. Such sinking analogies are common in this island nation and, for me, often conjure up an image of a mad dash to each side of the country in a desperate attempt to keep the UK afloat. It has become commonplace for proponents of immigration restrictions to attempt to separate immigration policy from debates on racism, as was seen in the Conservation campaign posters in the 2005 general election. As I observed in my chapter on asylum politics in the book The State of Race, immigration control is presented as a rational, common-sense approach that aims to match numbers to resources and the needs of the nation-state. Immigration control becomes a matter of rational order, efficiency and good management, uncomplicated by the emotions of 'race' and culture.

As Bauman (2004: 66) observed, 'State powers can do next to nothing to placate, let along quash uncertainty. The most they can do is to refocus on objects within reach'. Romanians and Bulgarians are simply the latest group of migrants targeted as scapegoats as the Coalition government continues with the longstanding formula adopted by governments for displacing the blame for economic uncertainties and fears.

In fact, contrary to the perception that migrants are a drain on public services and finance, recent research from Dustmann and Frattini (2013) at the University College London found that between 2001-2011 EEA migrants in the UK have made a net fiscal contribution of about £22.1 billion. Furthermore, as has long been known, key public services rely on migrant labour to keep them operational (see, for example, the health service where approximately 30% of health professionals are foreign born). In 2006, migrants in the USA undertook a series of protests under the banner 'A Day without Immigrants' in which more than a million Latinos came out on to the streets and boycotted workplaces, shops and schools. As Mehdi Hassan suggested in his article in the New Statesmen in July, a similar boycott by migrants and children of migrants in the UK could bring a whole sectors of services and businesses to a standstill. This is not to say there are not real and legitimate concerns about the resourcing of public services. However, I would suggest that the political spotlight needs to be shifted back to the real challenges which are on the supply side and the neoliberal ideologies lurking behind the policies of austerity An alternative and rather more accurate notion of 'lifeboat politics' would be to recognise that rather than sinking the ship, migrants in fact can help to keep 'host' nations afloat.