EU Accession Immigration and the Rise of UKIP

This chapter explains how the powerful issue dimensions of the EU and immigration were combined in the 2004 decision for open immigration with EU accession countries. As immigration rose in the 2000s, the salience of immigration increased substantially. The 2004 immigration decision had two key consequences. Firstly, it greatly constrained the ability of UK governments to change the level of immigration in response to public opinion, and secondly, it closely linked the previously separate issues of immigration and Europe. The salience of immigration was related most strongly to media coverage of the issue, which in turn closely tracked the actual rates of immigration. UKIP capitalized on this combined EU/immigration dimension and substantial numbers of voters switched to UKIP from the major parties in 2015 on this basis. We show that without the high salience of immigration between 2010 and 2015, the defections to UKIP would have been relatively small.

Reciprocity in the Co-Production of Public Services: The Role of Volunteering through Community Time Exchange?

Time Credits are a form of community currency based upon the reciprocal exchange of time and represent an interpretation of ‘time banking’ by a UK social enterprise, Spice. This article sets out the contribution made by research on Time Credits to the theory and practice of co-production in public services. Time Credits are intended to improve wellbeing through volunteering and ultimately increase economic participation. There is a focus on communities exhibiting high levels of deprivation within a small Cambridgeshire town (Wisbech, UK) which is geographically isolated and characterised by low-skilled, agri-food based employment opportunities that attracted high levels of inward migration from the A8 EU accession countries. In separating the rhetoric from the reality of co-production, the research aims to shed some light upon the extent to which such initiatives can realistically engender a shift towards a more reciprocal economy in the context of an ongoing programme of fiscal austerity.

Global Competition and Brexit

We show that support for the Leave option in the Brexit referendum was systematically higher in regions hit harder by economic globalization. We focus on the shock of surging imports from China over the past three decades as a structural driver of divergence in economic performance across U.K. regions. An IV approach supports a causal interpretation of our finding. We claim that the effect is driven by the displacement determined by globalization in the absence of effective compensation of its losers. Neither overall stocks nor inflows of immigrants in a region are associated with higher support for the Leave option. A positive association only emerges when focusing on immigrants from EU accession countries. The analysis of individual data suggests that voters respond to the import shock in a sociotropic way, as individuals tend to react to the general economic situation of their region, regardless of their specific condition.

Barriers for Highly Qualified A8 Immigrants in the UK Labour Market

The number of migrants arriving in the UK from the EU accession countries has been higher than projected. The evidence indicates that they have been over-represented in low-paid and low-skilled jobs. This is arguably transitory and there should be good prospects of upward mobility. Over-qualification among A8 migrants, measured using the Annual Population Survey data, is examined in this article. The findings show that A8 migrants have been subject to migration penalties at the high end of the UK labour market. There are persistent labour market disadvantages for A8 migrants in the UK and their over-qualification may be a long-term concern.

From Labour Migrant to Stay-at-Home Mother? Childcare and Return to Work among Migrant Mothers from the EU Accession Countries in Ireland

Previous research on the labour market integration of migrants from EU Accession countries has primarily viewed migrants as individual economic actors, despite their increasing role in family formation. In this contribution, mothers’ return to work after birth is analysed using data from the Irish childhood prospective cohort study Growing Up in Ireland. Families from the Accession countries appear to have little access to non-parental childcare or the support of extended family, which is an important resource for their Irish peers. Fewer EU Accession mothers return to paid work at the end of maternity leave, and are more likely to juggle work and childcare without support. Structural reasons as well as preferences are considered as potential explanations to develop a better understanding of how migrant status impacts on work and childcare decisions.

Extreme Coexceedances in South Eastern European Stock Markets with Focus on EU Accession Countries

The aim of this paper is to investigate and document the financial contagion of the South Eastern Europe (SEE) stock markets. Using a modification of the Bae et al. (2003) coexceedance approach based on multinomial logistic regressions we model the occurrence of the large negative or positive stock returns on a given day across the SEE stock markets. Specifically, we divide the SEE stock markets on two groups based on country’s EU membership in order to allow for transmission mechanism from major EU economies stock markets to EU member countries from SEE, and in addition, transitory effect from EU member countries from SEE to accession countries from SEE region. We test the persistence, asset class and volatility effects on the likelihood of the coexceedances in both SEE groups. We find that effects differ: (i) between negative and positive coexceedances and (ii) between the EU member countries and EU accession countries stock markets from SEE. The empirical evidence for the persistence effects, asset class and volatility effects in the SEE region should draw the attention of both investors and policy makers.