Immigration Policy from Post-War to Post-Brexit: How New Immigration Policy can Reconcile Public Attitudes and Employer Preferences

Heather Rolfe, Johnny Runge and Nathan Hudson-Sharp

National Institute Economic Review, 2019, vol. 248, issue 1, R5-R16

Abstract: As Britain prepares to leave the EU immigration policy has come to the top of the policy agenda. The Brexit vote was seen as a vote against free movement and new policies are aimed at introducing more restrictive controls. The report by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in September 2018 recommended little new provision for low-skilled migration post-Brexit ( MAC, 2018 ). This was then adopted by the Home Office in its Immigration White Paper, published in November 2018 ( Home Affairs Committee, 2018 ). The White Paper explicitly references public concerns that migrant labour reduces opportunities for British workers and undermines their pay and conditions. Yet employers have argued that they need to be able to continue to recruit lower, as well as highly skilled labour because the supply of British workers is insufficient. The paper explores the likely impact of proposed restrictions on immigration post-Brexit, using data from NIESR studies of employers and of the general public. It combines an assessment of what is needed to meet the needs of employers, the economy and to address public concerns, finding that there is more consensus than there is often considered to be.

Keywords: immigration policy; migration trends; public attitudes; Brexit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J48 J60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002795011924800109 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:niesru:v:248:y:2019:i:1:p:r5-r16

DOI: 10.1177/002795011924800109

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in National Institute Economic Review from National Institute of Economic and Social Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().