Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom

Eastern Europeans living in the United Kingdom have been present in the country, in small numbers, for several centuries, with subsequent large migrations in the 21st-century. The group can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, as well as nations which border with, or are otherwise ethnoculturally connected to, Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom

Total population
Belarusian - 4,734 (2015 UN estimate) Moldovan nationals - 18,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Russian nationals - 36,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Ukrainian nationals - 25,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Polish nationals - 900,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Romanian nationals - 450,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Bulgarian nationals - 121,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Lithuanian Nationals - 189,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Hungarian nationals - 109,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Latvian nationals - 100,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Slovak nationals - 80,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Czech nationals - 37,000 (ONS estimate 2019) Albanian nationals - 36,000 (ONS estimate 2019)
Regions with significant populations
London, Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton, Boston
Languages
British English Belarusian · Moldovan · Romanian · Russian · Ukrainian Other Eastern European Languages
Religion
Christianity, Non-religious, others
Related ethnic groups
Eastern Europeans · Eastern European Americans · Eastern European Australians · Eastern European Canadians

In diasporic terms, people with ancestry derived from Central European nations are at times included in the pan-ethnic grouping by British media. This is similar to Eastern European Americans and Eastern European Canadians in North America, and Eastern European Australians in Oceania.

There are roughly 2.2 million Eastern European nationals living in the UK, with the largest groups being: Polish, Romanian and Lithuanian nationals. There are 1,429,000 nationals from EU8 countries, 570,000 nationals from EU2 countries, 29,000 from other EU* nations (outside of the EU14**) and 216,000 from non-EU Europe.

*Other EU nations refer to Cyprus, Malta and Croatia

**EU14 refers to the members of the EU before 2004 (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Sweden).

Terminology

As Eastern European is not a category used in official statistics in the United Kingdom, the category holds similar status to East Asians and Southeast Asians in the United Kingdom, in that it is nonetheless used extensively in British media, research and scholarly works in terms of identification and classicification of a distinct pan-ethnic group.

Demographics

According to the 2011 UK census, Boston, Lincolnshire was the town with highest percentage of Eastern-European residents in England and Wales.[1]

Education

A 2014 King's College London report found that pupils from the pan-ethnic group faced stereotypes associated with their heritage. There were also revealed to be intragroup grade differences between different nationalities.[2] A 2019 UCL Institute of Education report found a significant achievement gap between Eastern European students and those of a white British background.[3]

Employment

A 2013 academic report found data suggesting "Eastern Europeans in Scotland value the opportunities for self-employment."[4] In 2015, the majority of the grouping, that were resident in Suffolk, were working-age and often young adults.[5] In 2017, published data showed that many held low-skilled or untrained occupations.[6]

History

The 1901 United Kingdom census recorded 86,240 Eastern Europeans in England and Wales, and a further 10,373 in Scotland. This represented an increase of over 55,000 on the previous 1891 census.[7]

Post-war refugees and labour

In the aftermath of World War II, approximately 80,000 Eastern Europeans, who were displaced or homeless, settled in the United Kingdom.[8] CEE (Central and Eastern European) refugees were also recruited as labourers from the European Voluntary Workers scheme, and were brought into the country by Clement Attlee's government to rebuild post-war Britain.[9]

EU accession

Since the opening up of EU accession in the early 21st-century, many Eastern Europeans have migrated to parts the United Kingdom. This two-decade migration phenomenon has been described as unprecedented in the history of the country.[10] In 2007 Rural Sociology published research which used Eastern Europeans in Britain as one of several examples of exceptional developments in the large-scale use of foreign labour or foreign workers in high-income nation's agricultural markets.[11]

This has created some social challenges in Britain. Russell Deacon has highlighted tension in Welsh-speaking areas of Wales, and how Cymuned, a Welsh pressure group, lobbied the Welsh government to prioritize housing for locals over East Europeans in the early 2000s.[12] In 2014, an analysis by John Harris appeared to outline social problems that had been created by large-scale immigration from Eastern Europe (and surrounding areas). Issues included reports of mafias operating, intra-ethnic disputes, killings, but also reported developments, including the ongoing revival of town centres due to East Europeans economic activity. [13]

Brexit

In June 2016, a referendum on the country's membership of the European Union took place. With a result to leave, many Eastern Europeans' relationship with, or perceived status in, the United Kingdom changed permanently. The month after the EU referendum, Under-Secretary of State Karen Bradley spoke in the House of Commons to address the issue of Eastern Europeans receiving xenophobic abuse in the aftermath of the result.[14] In 2018, British media reported growing concern for East European people affected by Brexit.[15] A 2018 study suggested the political process had particularly affected young Eastern Europeans "positioned in between the category of “migrant” and “citizen”.[16] Increasing living standards back home have been suggested in media as an explanatory driving force for the return of Eastern Europeans to their birth nations in 2019.[17]

Cultural influence

Economic

Due to the frequent and significant waves of migration of Eastern Europeans to the country in the 21st-century, evidence has showed that the United Kingdom's employment culture has been changed by the myriad of recruitment agencies and training networks organised to support and employ the group.[4]

In fiction

From a Ukrainian family, British author Marina Lewycka's 2005 and 2007 novels A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and Two Caravans focus on Eastern Europeans agricultural workers in England.[18][19]

Social and political issues

Discrimination

Representative of the polarising nature regarding the issue of immigration from the region, in 2010, Prime Minister Gordon Brown's election campaign was reported to be negatively affected when he called a member of his party a "bigoted woman", after the Labour supporter raised the topic of Eastern Europeans arriving in Britain.[20] In 2013, Romanian diplomat Ion Jinga suggested that "inflammatory rhetoric" in politics was increasing the risk of physical attacks on Eastern Europeans resident in the country.[21]

Integration

A 2013 Environment and Planning report correlated a "positive and strongly significant relationship between self-employment and integration" for the group.[4] In 2014, University College London's Dr Julia Halej published study which analyzed perceptions created by national media; how Eastern Europeans within the country occupied the social boundary of "whiteness" in Britain, being variously portrayed as "‘valuable’, ‘vulnerable’ and ‘villainous’".[22] A 2014 King's College London report, which examined the insights and challenges into the rapidly increasing various Eastern European ethnic groups in the UK education system, found that "Young people from Eastern Europe are seen as a new ‘Other’, both by the white majority and more established minority ethnic groups."[2]

A 2018 research by Dr Magdalena Nowicka, published in the Journal of Intercultural Studies, detailed data-studies which revealed how some people within the group aspired for, or achieved, increased social status by emphasising their whiteness and "embracing the meritocratic values of the white British class".[6]

See also

• Eastern European Americans
• Eastern European Australians
• Eastern European Canadians

References

1. Jamie Merrill (5 April 2015). "General Election 2015: In Boston, Ukip hope to overturn a 12,000-vote Tory majority with its immigration policies". The Independent. The Lincolnshire town of Boston, according to the last census, has the highest proportion of Eastern Europeans in England and Wales, and Ukip has been gaining ground here since 2012.
2. Antonina Tereshchenko (2014), New migration new challenges: Eastern European migrant pupils in English schools (PDF), King's College London, Young people, irrespective of their specific national backgrounds, report a set of detrimental cultural stereotypes applied to Eastern Europeans in England, e.g. as being heavy drinkers and smokers, jobless, aggressive and so on.
3. Feyisa Demie (2019), Educational attainment of Eastern European pupils in primary schools in England: Implications for policy and practice (PDF), UCL Institute of Education, There is also a wide variation in performance between regions in England, with large attainment gaps between Eastern European and White British children.
4. Sergei Shubin; Heather Dickey (2013). "Integration and mobility of Eastern European migrants in Scotland". Environment and Planning (Volume 45 ed.). SAGE Publications. p. 2959–2979. Firstly, frequent and multiple migrations of Eastern Europeans to Britain have lead to the creation of networks of recruitment agencies, and training and support organizations, and have changed work organization and employment relations in the host communities.
5. "Health and Wellbeing Suffolk: Joint Strategic Needs Assessment - Migrants from Eastern Europe" (PDF). Suffolk County Council. 1 July 2015. The majority of Eastern European people in Suffolk are young adults of working age. There are also children and some middle-aged and older people.
6. Magdalena Nowicka (2018). "Cultural Precarity: Migrants' Positionalities in the Light of Current Anti-immigrant Populism in Europe". Journal of Intercultural Studies. Taylor & Francis. p. 527-542. Still, the majority of Eastern Europeans in Britain perform low-paid, unqualified jobs (Frattini 2017) ... Various studies among Eastern Europeans in Britain have demonstrated how they claim higher social status by embracing the meritocratic values of the white British class, and by emphasising their whiteness (Datta and Brickell 2009; Fox et al. 2015).
7. Anne J Kershen (2008). "Immigrants, Sojourners and Refugees". In Chris Wrigley (ed.). A Companion to Early Twentieth-Century Britain. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 142. ISBN 978-0631217909. The 1901 Census recorded the presence of 86,240 eastern Europeans in England and Wales and 10,373 in Scotland ... This represented an increase of more than 55,000 on the previous Census.
8. Paulius Mackela (2018), Eastern Europeans in Britain: Successfully Integrated Citizens or Alienated Migrants?, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Britain has a long-standing history of migration from Eastern Europe ... The 1940s was a period of even greater migration to Britain due to the cataclysmic events of the Second World War. Amongst millions of migrants who came to Britain, approximately 80,000 people were from Eastern Europe (McDowell, 2003, p. 865) ... The latest statistical data shows that there are more than 1,7 million migrants from Eastern Europe currently living in the UK (Migration Observatory, 2015, p. 3).
9. Zinovijus Ciupijus (2011), Mobile central eastern Europeans in Britain: successful European Union citizens and disadvantaged labour migrants? (Volume 25 ed.), Work, Employment & Society, pp. 540–550, The cataclysmic events of World War II and its aftermath brought Polish political and military exiles in the 1940s and, simultaneously but independently, labour migrants from the European Voluntary Worker scheme. The latter scheme was created by the Attlee government to recruit tens of thousands of CEE refugees from the displacement camps in Germany to fill the post-war labour shortages in Britain (Kay and Miles, 1992).
10. Zinovijus Ciupijus (2012), "EU Citizens or Eastern European labour migrants? The peculiar case of Central Eastern Europeans in Britain", Politeja (Volume 20 ed.), Jagiellonian University, pp. 29–46, Contemporary Central Eastern European migration to the UK has been described as one of the most unprecedented phenomena in recent British history.
11. Kerry L. Preibisch (2007), "Local Produce, Foreign Labor: Labor Mobility Programs and Global Trade Competitiveness in Canada", Rural Sociology (Volume 72 ed.), John Wiley & Sons, pp. 418–449, In high income countries, a striking development has been the increasing employment of foreign workers in agricultural labor markets, with notable examples including North Africans in Spain, Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom, and Latin Americans in the United States.
12. Russell Deacon; Alan Sandry (2007). Devolution in the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Edinburgh University Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0748624164. The problem of solely English-speaking or Eastern European people moving into predominantly Welsh-speaking areas has at times been a sensitive political issue. In 2001 a pressure group, Cymuned (Community), began to lobby the Welsh Assembly on issues relating to inward migration and the need to prioritise local housing for local people.
13. John Harris (16 June 2014). "Fear and anger in once-wealthy town divided by insecurity and immigration". The Guardian.
14. "EU Referendum: Race Hate Crime". Hansard. 5 July 2016. Much of the reporting of hate incidents has been through social media, including reports of xenophobic abuse of eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom, as well as attacks against members of the Muslim community.
15. Lisa O'Carroll (5 June 2018). "Concerns for eastern Europeans in Brexit 'settled status' plan". The Guardian.
16. Kate Botterill; David McCollum; Naomi Tyrrell (2018), Negotiating Brexit: Migrant spatialities and identities in a changing Europe (Special Issue Paper ed.), Wiley, Young Eastern Europeans in the United Kingdom positioned in between the category of “migrant” and “citizen” as the Brexit process unfolds.
17. Shaun Walker (October 26, 2019). "'This is the golden age': eastern Europe's extraordinary 30-year revival". The Guardian. In the long run, if the countries of central and eastern Europe can continue to catch up with the west, many of the emigres will be drawn back. With Brexit stalking the UK, there are already anecdotal signs of an incipient return..
18. Susan Wyndham (January 6, 2007). "This year's best books". The Sydney Morning Herald. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian was a hit debut for Marina Lewycka, who returns with Two Caravans, about Eastern Europeans in England (Fig Tree, February)
19. Peter Kingston (15 July 2008). "The truth and the tractors". The Guardian. Like Tractors, her second published novel, Two Caravans, is about eastern Europeans in England. In this case they have come to pick strawberries.)
20. Polly Curtis (28 April 2010). "Gordon Brown calls Labour supporter a 'bigoted woman'". The Guardian. At one point, Duffy mentioned the presence of eastern Europeans in Britain but did not develop her argument ... Duffy interjected: "You can't say anything about the immigrants because you're saying that you're … but all these eastern European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?"
21. Ion Jinga (21 February 2013). "Romanians' presence in the United Kingdom and the value of free movement of people". The Daily Telegraph. The risk of racist attacks on eastern Europeans in Britain is rising because of "inflammatory rhetoric" from politicians, Romania’s ambassador to London warns today.
22. Julia Halej (2014), Other Whites, White Others: East European Migrants and the Boundaries of Whiteness, University College London, p. 245, The media analysis identified a panoply of cultural stereotypes about East European migrants prevalent in Britain, synthesised into a taxonomy of ‘valuable’, ‘vulnerable’ and ‘villainous’ Eastern Europeans, revealing the complexity of the positions that East European migrants occupied within the symbolic boundary of ‘whiteness’ in the elite discourse in Britain.