Since the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and 2007 there has been a large migration wave from Eastern Europe to the United Kingdom.
The workers who come will often move into low-income and often temporary jobs, in spite of frequently having higher levels of qualification and longer education than UK-born workers. 1
The inability to transfer educational qualifications and basic English language skills result in low levels of labour market power. Frequently demonstrated through low absence levels and longer working hours, these migrant are finding new ways of signalling their potential higher productivity. 2
A study by University of Birmingham and Centrala (a cultural space in Birmingham) delves into specificities of creative economies of migrants in the UK. Although dealing with a particular set of workers, the study further divulged the issue of home country qualifications and likelier over qualification and underpayment than UK-born workers. 3
The study has also found that EE creatives do not enjoy equal access and representation in the cultural sector, while their interests, participation and career opportunities are not sufficiently protected by the current regulations. 4
This is partly because in spite of being othered and/or discriminated, Eastern European migrants don’t have access to diversity measurements.
Amid Brexit, there was a rise in xenophobic attacks against Eastern European migrants. Because of this, many have come to see themselves as potential victims, causing anxiety and an atmosphere of suspicion. Out of those who stayed, many have adopted adaptive strategies such as not speaking their language publicly, changing their accent and getting British education.
Although Eastern Europeans are predominately white and enjoy the privilege of invisibility of whiteness, this whiteness in only protective on a surface level as ones origin is distinguishable by their accent or name. This privilege is also questioned when the migrants don’t have cultural capital to ‘perform whiteness’ in the way UK-born people do. 5
Some migrants have been able to ‘pass as white’, specifically ‘ British middle class white’ due to their accent and/or cultural capital. 6 Acceptance into the ‘community of value’ is conditional and dependant on individual access to resources. 7 Access to resources is dependent on cultural capital which grants access to tangible and symbolic goods such as work, social protection, prestige, etc. 8
The process of acceptance is dependant on one’s position in the labour market or appropriate social skills. While national background is a burden one carries, being granted an individual pass into the community of value is dependant on meeting middle class criteria of ‘respectability’. 9
For migrants in particular, class categories are not constant but something against which they are tested against - needing to prove their belonging in a strive for recognition. 10
Endnotes
1 Hopkins, ‘Analysing the ‘migrant work ethic’’, 452.
2 Ibid., 452.
3 Centrala, ‘In-between spaces’, 4.
4 Ibid., 7.
5 Ibid., 7.
6 Blachnicka-Ciacek, ‘‘The other whites’’, 1099.
7 Ibid., 1099.
8 Ciupijus, ‘EU Citizens or Labour Migrants?, 29.
9 Blachnicka-Ciacek, ‘‘The other whites’’, 1099.
10Ibid., 1099
Bibliography
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