We once wrote a blog (LSS 8 12 22) expressing wonder at how some people in Cumbria were demanding to be put back underground into the dangerous job of coal mining. We ascribed this to nostalgia for a lost sense of community, and the lack of cultural tools to imagine anything better.
Which is why an article by the ingenious Larry Elliott of the Guardian[1] has caught our eye. As some of us predicted in 2016, Brexit did not reduce the flow of immigration. It simply shifted the sources to countries such as India, Nigeria and Zimbabwe. The introduction of a points-based system has effected one crucial shift, replacing unskilled European workers with skilled ones from the former Commonwealth. As Larry notes:
Data from Oxford University’s migration observatory shows migrants from India and sub-Saharan Africa are more likely to be employed in high-skilled jobs and command higher salaries than those from eastern Europe.
The new system has certainly reduced the salience of immigration as a political issue. The sort of low to semi-skilled manual workers who voted Leave in such large numbers in 2016, may find their occupations and lifestyles unthreatened, while enjoying the services of more and more doctors, lawyers and IT professionals. But there may be a long term danger.
A culturally stagnant working class, content to remain forever in roles like builders and miners, could find itself becoming subservient to a new class of foreign born professionals. which they will perceive as alien. As Amy Chua pointed out in her excellent work Political Tribes, the real cause of the Vietnam war was that ordinary Vietnamese hated the largely Chinese middle class, who seemed to have cornered all the best opportunities. It was the same with Jews in many parts of Europe, whose values of thrift and intelligence were never enough to save them from the most dreadful persecutions. We have been wrong before in this blog (although we cannot think of a simple example right now) but we would watch this trend carefully. Particularly with regard to the negotiations with India.
[2] Amy Chua Political Tribes Penguin 2018
#brexit #xenophobia #immigration #migration #middle class #india # nahrendra mohdi #rishi sunak
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