Revolving doors and one-way streets: a disaggregated look at the UK’s migration figures
12 January 2015
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Despite all the furore about immigration, comparatively little is written about emigration. But what we know about emigrants from the UK can shed some useful light on the debate about Britain’s borders.
For many years in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Britain might, with some justice, have been called a ‘nation of emigrants’. Those leaving the country outnumbered those coming in. Even today well over 300,000 a year typically leave the country expecting to be away for at least a year – the UN definition of long-term migration, which the ONS follows. The ‘stock’ of British-born people living abroad is around 5 million; according to the UN, this is the largest number of expats for any high-income OECD country. By contrast, only about two and a half million Americans live outside the Land of the Free.
The make-up of those emigrating is revealing. Despite bucolic fantasies of retiring to Provence or geriatric hedonism on the Costa Brava, adult emigrants are overwhelmingly of working age and are moving to, or seeking, jobs abroad. They are disproportionately from managerial and professional occupations. 40% are taking advantage of the free movement of labour to work elsewhere in the European Union.
But this isn’t a brain drain story. Startlingly, very few (5-10,000 a year) emigrants are leaving to study abroad. This contrasts sharply with immigration to the UK, which currently welcomes around 175,000 overseas students a year. Arguably we should encourage more UK students to study abroad to redress this balance: the muddled and expensive student loan system, and our appalling school language teaching, discourage mobility. Theresa May’s concerns about overseas students might look less plausible if more of our youngsters acquired experience of other countries at an important stage of their development. And it is not just among students that there is virtual one-way traffic – people from professional footballers to academics to HR managers might well improve their future careers with a spell abroad.
Most of those studying overseas, of course, will return home eventually. And this reminds us that ‘emigration’ is a misleading term. Less than half of emigrants are Brits: in 2011 57% of those leaving the country were non-UK citizens. Emigrants seem to be more likely to be single than immigrants, and fewer of them are moving for purposes of family reunion.
The current concerns about uncontrolled EU immigration are understandable, but a look at the figures suggests that they need qualification. EU immigrants are more likely to ‘return emigrate’ than non-EU immigrants, especially those from Africa and the Indian sub-continent. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone account for about 30% of those who become British citizens, a good indicator of permanent settlement.
Of course some EU ‘emigrants’ from the UK may return as ‘immigrants’ at some later date. With free mobility of labour, EU nationals (Brits included) may have a number of spells working in a country, perhaps studying, returning, coming back to work, returning and so forth.
All these subtleties suggest that policy-makers need to tread carefully in designing policies, which may not lead to the outcomes they expect.
For example, a clampdown on EU migration to the UK may lead, at least in the short run, to a perverse result. Primary immigration may fall, but so may emigration as those EU citizens already here decide not to go home as they may not be allowed back into the UK. And as Brits will no longer be free to move to Spain, France and Germany (as they now do in quite large numbers), their emigration will be deterred too. If they lose jobs abroad they may have to come home, boosting ‘return immigration’ – currently running at over 90,000 a year, something which people are generally not aware of. The result of these contrasting flows might very well be that net immigration – that feared political headline figure – actually rises.
Playing the numbers game, then, is hazardous. We need to be a lot clearer just why we want restrictions on labour mobility, whom we wish to exclude and what the predictable consequences of doing so would be.
For many years in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s, Britain might, with some justice, have been called a ‘nation of emigrants’. Those leaving the country outnumbered those coming in. Even today well over 300,000 a year typically leave the country expecting to be away for at least a year – the UN definition of long-term migration, which the ONS follows. The ‘stock’ of British-born people living abroad is around 5 million; according to the UN, this is the largest number of expats for any high-income OECD country. By contrast, only about two and a half million Americans live outside the Land of the Free.
The make-up of those emigrating is revealing. Despite bucolic fantasies of retiring to Provence or geriatric hedonism on the Costa Brava, adult emigrants are overwhelmingly of working age and are moving to, or seeking, jobs abroad. They are disproportionately from managerial and professional occupations. 40% are taking advantage of the free movement of labour to work elsewhere in the European Union.
But this isn’t a brain drain story. Startlingly, very few (5-10,000 a year) emigrants are leaving to study abroad. This contrasts sharply with immigration to the UK, which currently welcomes around 175,000 overseas students a year. Arguably we should encourage more UK students to study abroad to redress this balance: the muddled and expensive student loan system, and our appalling school language teaching, discourage mobility. Theresa May’s concerns about overseas students might look less plausible if more of our youngsters acquired experience of other countries at an important stage of their development. And it is not just among students that there is virtual one-way traffic – people from professional footballers to academics to HR managers might well improve their future careers with a spell abroad.
Most of those studying overseas, of course, will return home eventually. And this reminds us that ‘emigration’ is a misleading term. Less than half of emigrants are Brits: in 2011 57% of those leaving the country were non-UK citizens. Emigrants seem to be more likely to be single than immigrants, and fewer of them are moving for purposes of family reunion.
The current concerns about uncontrolled EU immigration are understandable, but a look at the figures suggests that they need qualification. EU immigrants are more likely to ‘return emigrate’ than non-EU immigrants, especially those from Africa and the Indian sub-continent. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone account for about 30% of those who become British citizens, a good indicator of permanent settlement.
Of course some EU ‘emigrants’ from the UK may return as ‘immigrants’ at some later date. With free mobility of labour, EU nationals (Brits included) may have a number of spells working in a country, perhaps studying, returning, coming back to work, returning and so forth.
All these subtleties suggest that policy-makers need to tread carefully in designing policies, which may not lead to the outcomes they expect.
For example, a clampdown on EU migration to the UK may lead, at least in the short run, to a perverse result. Primary immigration may fall, but so may emigration as those EU citizens already here decide not to go home as they may not be allowed back into the UK. And as Brits will no longer be free to move to Spain, France and Germany (as they now do in quite large numbers), their emigration will be deterred too. If they lose jobs abroad they may have to come home, boosting ‘return immigration’ – currently running at over 90,000 a year, something which people are generally not aware of. The result of these contrasting flows might very well be that net immigration – that feared political headline figure – actually rises.
Playing the numbers game, then, is hazardous. We need to be a lot clearer just why we want restrictions on labour mobility, whom we wish to exclude and what the predictable consequences of doing so would be.
3 thoughts on “Revolving doors and one-way streets: a disaggregated look at the UK’s migration figures”
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Well, that’s a good pussy-foot around some of the numbers. Here are the ONS immigration numbers (thousands) by citizenship and reason for migration for the year to June 2014:
…………………..Gross……………………………………………………Net
………….Job…Looking…Student..Family…Total…..Job…Looking…Student..Family…Total
British…..21……18…………9………..11………83..[..-31…….2…………..2……….-4…….-50
EU15……45…….24………27………….7……..117..[..30……13…………23………..4……..67
A8……….24…….23………..6………….8………74..[..17……18…………..5………..6……..44
A2……….11…….13………..4………….4………32..[….9…….13………….3………..1……..27
Total EU..82…….60………40………..16……..228..[..57…….44………..33……….11……142
OCW……10………7………..2………….4………29..[….6……..0………….1…………3……..13
NCW……16………3……….34……….21……….84..[…7…….-11………..32……….18……..49
Other…..18……….3……….86……….29……..159..[….5……-17………..81……….25……105
Non EU..44……..12……..121……….54……..272..[…17…..-28……….114……….46……168
Total…..149……..97……..176……….84……..583..[..41…….24……….153………54…….260
Job: definite job; Looking (for work); Total includes other reasons; OCW Old Commonwealth; NCW New Commonwealth.
Footnote: of all former immigrants emigrating, just 51,000 came here as students from outside the EU, and 18,000 from inside the EU. If students emigrated at the end of their (multi year) courses, as May wishes, we would now be seeing emigration of former students in line with immigration of students roughly three years previously – or over 240,000 emigrants instead of 70,000. The difference would reduce overall net immigration to about 90,000 – dominated by those from the EU coming for work related reasons, including an alarming recent increase in those merely “looking for work”, rather than taking up jobs they have already secured.
Students are the big immigration backdoor. We should be increasing our monitoring of them, to ensure that it is not being abused, as we know it has been. May’s proposal is eminently sensible, and indeed, how things used to be. We then get to choose the best workers to fulfil essential roles from a global pool, not merely those who managed to wangle a student visa, and we are not forced to hang on to mediocre students who manage to clear some low bar income hurdle, or who simply stay on illegally in large numbers anyway.
Len, you speak of the ‘appalling school language teaching’, as a young person myself who finished his A-levels a few years ago- and did a language- I’m not sure I agree with your statement. I don’t feel its the system that’s at fault here, and we could do well to look at the picture through an economic lense: a significant proportion of the world speak/learn English, and this will be proportionately even higher in professional circles + well paid jobs etc. Its a basic question of time allocation: why would a student opt to learn a language from which they will gain limited utility in the future, compared to say Further Maths which will beef up the CV and help gain admission to a top university? The current GCSE + A-level syllabus in languages is actually pretty good in my opinion, and I don’t want to see another pointless rewriting/adjusting of it when frankly, it’s probably not broken. What WILL be interesting to see is in 30 or 40 years time when the commercial centre of gravity as shifted towards non-English countries or economic activity, and the potential utility gain from languages is much higher, will there be more British students taking up a language. I strongly suspect so.
Jay, the gravity of world trade may shift, but there’s a strong path dependency here. Given that English has already become the language of international commerce, it will probably remain so, no matter what happens to the economies of the English-speaking countries. The cost of switching would simply be too high.