I’m still liking my hunch that the public defines “immigration” as it pleases. If a particular kind of immigration is increasing / visibly uncontrolled, people are quite capable of defining immigration to mean that particular phenomenon. So a general fall in immigration makes no difference.
And shows how even if government could stop small boats entirely or reduce net migration to zero some people still wouldn't be happy. They'd just move on to the next boogyman, just as they did after Brexit.
There are four imagined immigrants that come naturally to mind: - the NHS worker: paradigm of positive contribution - a blue collar worker: eg Polish plumber. They work hard, but what about skills here] - the genuine refugee of the time: eg Syria/Ukraine - unknown back of a lorry/small boat arrival
The NHS is an interesting one. I’ve seen people saying it’s bad there’s been a big drop in nurse recruitment overseas. But that’s not actually true. Some years we need to recruit more nurses than others so immigration fluctuates. Over-recruiting overseas would mean fewer jobs for nursing graduates.
The fact that people see nurses and doctors (almost everybody, including sceptics) as the paradigm of the positive contribution of immigration that just about every single person has some personal experience of/contact with doesn't mean government does not have tricky policy decisions to make
Yes. When I see people in polls say they want more immigrant doctors and nurses then I think they haven’t thought through what that means in practice (more unemployment for British graduates in medicine or nursing). Unless there’s also a bigger expansion of the workforce of course.
To a large extent, shifts in the salience of "immigration" and people's view about immigration depend on which of these people is top of mind - Polish plumber, 2004-16 - salience of the NHS workers during/after Covid dramatically shifted attitudes on work migration - Ukraine in 2022 - Now boats
YouGov polled something along these lines: 47% of Britons incorrectly think there are more migrants staying in the UK illegally than legally: yougov.co.uk/politics/art...
The public are terrible at sizing/ scaling big numbers. The public think MPs pay is 8% of the total budget..
If we were to see a massive influx of white Americans (a few thousand so far, who can’t stand living in trump’s America, and I’m with them on that one) would they be viewed as “immigrants”?
Yes the #bbc has been very effective here turning asylum seekers into ‘illegals’ into economic migrants just migrants all the time with the implication that being a refugee claiming asylum is illegal - dealt with
Economists: is this true of inflation? At moments of high food-price inflation but falling petrol prices, do people’s inflation perceptions anchor to food, and vice versa? Or do inflation perceptions reflect general inflation quite well?
I think there is reasonable evidence that the public (much to the annoyance of central bankers) is very sensitive to ‘anti-core’ inflation - food and energy.
It's what's most immediately noticeable, so it makes intuitive sense.
Useful paper www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/...
Interesting, thanks. The answer seems to be: no, inflation perceptions are consistently linked to food prices and alcohol prices.
It is certainly true of social security benefits/welfare. There are people who absolutely lose it if you refer to state pensions as a benefit.
Yup, and ~exactly the same dynamic with crime www.ft.com/content/7488...
Crime is interesting because while mist violence is down, the disintegration of public spaces make people feel less safe. I was just telling a friend about the horrific fly tipping on my street - just an unbelievable pile of waste - & everyone knows who is doing it and no consequences. It feels …
… disorderly to walk past what is essentially a low level crime, but one happening in broad daylight, making our street feel unsafe and ugly, knowing that nothing will be done about it. Visible stuff like this makes people feel less safe, that things are broken, even tho crime is going down!
My local Tesco Express has been closed because of being robbed on two separate occasions in the last week, which is a "WTF?!" moment regardless of what you know about general trends.
Yes - and I think we need to grapple with people’s sense of things not working and their places feeling like shit, without allowing the far right narrative of broken lawless tinderbox Britain to take hold
I mean, there’s a smashed up toilet on my street. I live close to the centre of one of the UK’s richest cities.
I live in France. People have been forecasting the end of France due to high taxes, bureaucracy, gilets jaune, Macron, Le Pen. You name it. In today's small town I passed 3 guys strimming and cleaning a path between the railway station (immaculate) and the town centre (immaculate). Worth paying for.
This requires money to be spent to tidy things up and make sure they work. Just to mix up another news story getting far too much traction ATM, why can't asylum seekers do municipally important work, litter picking, grass cutting, fence painting in exchange for modest money and a safe place to live?
The way to make that happen is to give asylum seekers work permits and make local councils properly funded, just for the record. If they want to do that work, then they’ll apply.
That's certainly one way.
Yep! Which echoes US economic sentiment discourse in 2023-24, where the argument was “The economy is fine! It’s the media’s fault for writing negative stories!”, but the people who had the most negative views about the economy were those who got their info from their own experiences or word of mouth
Absolutely agree with this - I felt it with Sunak too, you can’t say “guys the economy is recovering!” when people go to the supermarket and olive oil is £15
I think also the increase in shoplifting but also the brazenness with which it’s done hasn’t helped. They no longer even try and hide it. Which means people are more likely to see it but that it’s so open changes gives the impression that things have broken down.
Wasn't stuff like this the focus of Guiliani's 👀 NY 'Broken Windows' programme?
I thought that was more Bill Bratton, as NYPD Chief, rather than Rudy as mayor?
Guiliani stealing the credit for someone else's ideas? I am shocked yes shocked, sir!
The part of Broken Windows theory that hasn’t stood the test of time is not the perceptions part, it’s that if you cleared up low-level crime, high-level crime would also fall.
Yep, I'm aware: that presumed correlation was always dodgy
👍
Yup! Not sure if you read my piece the other week, but not only is this dynamic demonstrably true in all the data we have, it’s also entirely in line with what studies have consistently found in terms of what shapes perceptions
Yes!! This puts it so much better than I did.
Thank you! Unfortunately, I think there’s a similar asymmetry in terms of how the reality of immigration filters through to perceptions. The data show non-EU immigrants to the UK are now employed at higher rates than ever, and quickly overtake native-born Brits on average earnings…
But nobody *sees* or *experiences* those aggregate stats. What they see is a highly visible rise in low-skilled immigration and associated disorder (delivery riders).
Yes exactly this
Some do. Some just see brown people. Nothing will change their minds. The racist 25% or so have got a way to be legitimate.
Fly-tipping isn’t monitored by the Crime Survey!
Fun twist on this that I keep coming back to: the role of e-bikes, which have: • Helped facilitate snatch theft • Made low-skilled immigration very visible (food delivery riders)
Also increases the feeling there's more general anti-social behaviour, as the food delivery business model (as fast as possible) means riders are more likely to do things like jump red lights and ride on pavements.
Yes! Great point. And pavements a particular issue I think, because when cyclists do that it’s super annoying, but when e-bikes do it it’s much more dangerous.
How has anybody not been killed or seriously injured by what is effectively a moped on a pavement? Or maybe they have but it’s just not been reported?
These are largely illegal e-bikes. Thankfully the police do seem to be doing more to crack down on their use. There’s now a useful website pointing out the difference ebikepositive.co.uk
I dug into the headlines about Swindon banning e-bikes from the city centre and, fortunately, the idiot Reformey council has no such powers and was merely feeding hysteria. All they did was ban something already illegal, which is very Reformey.
Here's the actual 'ban': legal e-bikes are legal and illegal e-bikes are illegal. Attention seeking muppets wasting everyone's time.
You can read the whole thing here. Reeks of Reform but is actually a Reform Lite council. www.swindon.gov.uk/downloads/fi...
Certain sectors of the public define "too much immigration" as meaning that there are still black and brown people living somewhere in the UK – not even necessarily anywhere near them. The panic about Polish immigrants 20 years ago seems to have been completely replaced by naked racism.
and that’s why Labour running election on “we have reduced immigration by 48.73%” is terrible politics
Isn’t it more likely that immigration remains salient as RATES of immigration fall because the immigrants who arrived in previous years are… still here!
So literally “stopping the boats” means stopping the (triggering) image of inflatables full of young men? Then the public’s perception of immigration becomes more fractured so to speak?
I think it's also worth reflecting on the fact that although the increase in migration is falling, more migrants are still coming to the UK each year. Despite downward trends, this still increases the visibility of immigration. That gets lost in this conversation.