Housing: the most contentious issue?

Amas's (Reference Amas2008: 17) assertion that ‘competition over scarce resources, and specifically housing, in socio-economically deprived neighbourhoods is at the heart of tensions between established communities and new migrant groups’, highlights another contentious area that consistently featured in discussions with established community members. In a situation where local demand for accommodation outstrips supply, participants routinely outlined the view that A8 migration had negatively impacted on their local housing options. Newly arrived migrants were consistently blamed for pushing up neighbourhood house prices and inflating private sector rental costs.

The potential for housing-related issues to fuel resentment between established communities and their newly arrived neighbours was further emphasised when members of the established white community discussed social housing. Central to their concerns was a strongly held perception that A8 migrants were receiving preferential treatment in respect of accessing social housing and allied support.

Further debate revealed that the newly arrived migrants in question were not A8 migrants, but asylum seekers housed and supported under the separate system UK Borders Agency system. Nonetheless, the data above are important for two reasons. First, it is indicative of a widespread lack of knowledge about rights to housing and welfare for migrants that have arrived in recent years. Such misunderstandings are hardly surprising given the complicated rules that govern varied entitlements to social housing (Rooney, Reference Rooney2008; Garner, Reference Garner and Sveinsson2009). Second, it illustrates how access to, and the allocation of, scarce public resources can breed resentment among established residents who perceive their rights and needs to be secondary to those of new arrivals.

Such sentiments are not unique to our study. Hostility and resentment among sections of established communities in the East End of London, particularly the white working class, towards the Bangladeshi community are noted elsewhere (Dench et al., Reference Dench, Gavron and Young2006). In a later piece written to defend his work in the face of fierce criticism (see Moore, Reference Moore2008), Dench notes that the perceived prioritisation of the needs of newcomers above and beyond the claims of established community members is:

However, available evidence on the occupancy of social housing challenges the perception that new migrant groups are likely to be allocated social housing before more established residents. Robinson's (Reference Robinson2007) analysis shows that less than 1 per cent of social rented lettings across England are allocated to A8 nationals. The majority of A8 migrants do not have sufficient priority housing needs to qualify for social housing (ICoCo, 2007) and decisions on A8 nationals’ applications for housing and homelessness support (including those deemed to be ineligible) represented only 0.5 per cent of local authorities’ total judgements in the period May 2004 to June 2008 (UKBA, 2008).

Nationwide, A8 migrants typically live in privately rented properties and make little use of social housing (Amas, Reference Amas2008). Many, initially, live in housing provided by an employment agency, but often quite rapidly exit this to seek out privately rented accommodation that is cheaper or of a better standard. This additional demand for housing may push up rents and house prices which, as noted above, many ‘locals’ see as detrimental. Additionally, our study confirms that the majority of A8 migrants have problems accessing social housing due to limited eligibility, the general shortage of social housing stock and long waiting lists.

Rutter and Latorre (Reference Rutter and Latorre2009) similarly found that foreign migrants were not being given preferential access to social housing. However, they also acknowledge the persistent belief among many established communities that new migrants are afforded preferential treatment – a view reiterated in our research:

Media scare stories play their part and the sale of former council housing stock to private landlords, which is subsequently privately let to new migrants, may also fuel misconceptions (Rutter and Latorre, Reference Rutter and Latorre2009). However, as affordable social housing stock in many urban neighbourhoods has diminished in recent decades, simultaneously those same neighbourhoods have become home to increasingly diverse populations. Some additional demand for local social housing is bound to occur when new migrant groups, including A8 migrants, become eligible for social housing. Many established white and minority ethnic communities, therefore, view themselves as competing with recently arrived migrants for scarce housing resources. The additional demands generated by new migrant groups on the available social resources of certain neighbourhoods and the needs emerging from the ‘super diversity’ emerging in the UK's larger cities need to be acknowledged (Vertovec, Reference Vertovec2007).

Debates about recently arrived migrants having to compete with established communities for scarce, local resources, such as jobs and housing, have a long history. Burney's (Reference Burney1967) study highlights the disadvantages and discrimination faced by ‘Commonwealth immigrants’ in London trying to secure reasonable accommodation against a backdrop of a local housing shortages. She provides a strong critique of allocation mechanisms (often based on of length of residence and local connection) that prioritise ‘local people's’ rights to social housing above the often greater needs of newcomers.

Banton's (Reference Banton1983) rational choice approach to understanding how different ethnic groups compete for scarce resources and how discriminatory and racist practices may be invoked as one group seeks to defend what it regards as its interests and entitlements against those of others is also relevant here. Central to Banton's theory is the idea that it is in the process of competing for scarce resources that ethnic and racial groups coalesce and assume significance. Individuals find common ground with those they view as being like themselves whilst excluding ‘others whom they define as ineligible to belong to their group’ (1983: 106). Banton's discussion specifically highlights the housing and employment markets as two sectors where competition for resources are routinely played out between groups. He is also aware that it is often the poorer sections of majority populations that are most likely to resort to exclusive tactics, as it is almost certainly they who will be most affected by increased competition, and they often lack the social and cultural capital to pursue other options.

Discussions in this paper indicate that the boundaries between groups are not always mobilised around simple white/non-white divides. Boundaries can be articulated around residence, locality or a perceived lack of appropriate prior contribution (Garner, Reference Garner and Sveinsson2009). Those deemed to lack a legitimate claim for scarce local resources may also be white, as is the case with many A8 migrants. Similarly, the exclusive rhetoric among disadvantaged urban communities is not solely limited to white populations. Although, as Garner (Reference Garner and Sveinsson2009) reports, the white working class see themselves as the ‘exclusive victims’ of local disempowerment and abandonment, our study perhaps illustrates that these feelings are also a feature of other non-white established communities’ perceptions and that they too are fearful that A8 migration may negatively impact on the already limited local resources they are able to access. The social change occurring in certain neighbourhoods as a result of A8 migration is played out against the backdrop of past migration and the common structured disadvantages faced by established white and minority ethnic working-class communities.

Proactive and defensive citizenship engagement

As Ellison (Reference Ellison2000: 1.1) notes, contemporary citizenship is characterised by changing modes of participation and belonging, where citizen engagement is played out in a range of spaces from local to global: ‘Rapid change transforms the nature of citizen participation and “encourages” engagement, willing or not, in the pursuit, or defence, of particular interests and/or social rights.’ Making a distinction between two different types of citizen activity, Ellison notes that ‘proactive engagement’ occurs when specific groups are able to utilise a particular set of social resources and conditions to enhance their interests (or those of others). In contrast, ‘defensive engagement’ is often triggered as citizens, in the face of ongoing economic, social and political change, mount a defence against ‘the erosion of their social rights’ (Ellison, Reference Ellison2000: 1.4). In short, proactive engagement is often linked to the expansion of citizenship and an extension of the rights that citizenship brings to others, whilst defensive engagement routinely occurs when certain citizens are looking to preserve or maintain their existing entitlements and interests.

How useful is this insight when considering the local impact of A8 migration and the, at times, exclusive response of host communities? This paper primarily focuses on the ways in which established communities experience and make sense of the local impact of migration within their neighbourhoods. Nonetheless, a brief discussion of the motivations underpinning A8 respondents’ decisions to migrate to the UK, and the ways in which they look to access health services is important in illustrating how A8 migrants are able to proactively engage with EU citizenship to enhance their interests. A desire to find work, reinforced by a favourable disparity in wage-earning potential between their countries of origin and the UK, was the pre-eminent motivation across all the A8 migrant groups we interviewed.

From 2004, the relative economic advantages available, for the first time, to A8 nationals looking for work in a booming UK labour market were undoubtedly a strong pull factor in many initial decisions to migrate. Among the Roma participants within our study, this was also augmented by a strong desire to escape the endemic persecution and discrimination they faced within in their country of origin.

This position was endorsed when two other Roma participants described previous, unsuccessful attempts to relocate their families to the UK by claiming asylum prior to EU enlargement. All the Roma families intended to settle permanently in England and rebuild their lives.

Within our study, A8 respondents were registered with local doctors and had used hospital services when required. However, the level of additional demand from A8 migrants for health services appears to be relatively low, for two reasons. First, many migrant workers are young and healthy. Second, the majority of A8 migrants consistently preferred to return to their home country to more quickly access familiar and, in their view, more appropriate healthcare services:

This brief consideration of the motivations that underpin A8 migrants’ movements is important because it illustrates the particular type of proactive engagement EU expansion has made possible for A8 nationals. A8 migrants exercise their new rights as EU citizens to live and work in a host member state whilst simultaneously utilising their status as national citizens of a particular state in order to access what they consider to be better healthcare services in their country of origin. These movements are indicative of a distinct type of citizenship engagement where individual migrants make a series of proactive choices about how their particular needs may be best served by the opportunities EU expansion has offered them. It is not, at present, about identifiable groups demanding collectivised social rights.

Mobile A8 nationals are proactively engaging with their newly acquired rights to free movement within the EU. For many, relocation offers certain financial and lifestyle advantagesFootnote ⁴ (Cook et al., Reference Cook, Dwyer and Waite2011). As new EU citizens they are, quite legitimately, looking to exploit the tangible benefits that their new opportunities for mobility may bring. However, the unprecedented and largely unpredicted numbers of A8 citizens who subsequently chose to exercise their rights to live and work in the UK caught the British government by surprise and evidence suggests that in particular locations this movement has a significant impact on local job markets, housing and certain public services (ICoCo, 2007; TUC, 2007).

Against the backdrop of A8 migrants proactively engaging with their new supra-national rights, members of established local host communities start to engage defensively to protect what they perceive to be a threat to their rights to local jobs and housing. In doing so, they consistently seek to justify their stance by legitimatising the exclusion of newly arrived A8 migrants on the basis that jobs and welfare should be reserved primarily for those national citizens who are seen as having previously contributed to the common good of the national community.

Underpinning such attitudes is the view that the social rights of established community members are being usurped by newcomers whose claims are seen as less valid. Established residents are seeking to defend their position by invoking a restricted understanding of social citizenship tied to a principle of reciprocity, where claims to collective entitlement demand prior contribution (Dwyer, Reference Dwyer2000; Taylor-Gooby, Reference Taylor-Gooby2005). Allied to this is an underlying fear that the already limited resources available to local host communities will diminish further still if the claims of new arrivals are allowed.

As A8 migrants actively look to assert their new supra-national (EU) rights, established community members, who feel their needs are subsequently being marginalised, seek to defend their local rights to goods and services by invoking a national logic of territorialised prioritisation and concern (Morley, Reference Morley2000).

Much work highlights racism, particularly white racist hostility and violence, as a continuing problem for members of the diverse ethnic minority communities resident in Britain. Hemmerman et al. (Reference Hemmerman, Law, Simms and Sirriyeh2007) point out the complex ways in which racism is played out in inner-city communities and also racists’ propensity to explain away, or deny, racist intent when defending exclusive opinions. Similarly, both cultural and economic factors have been identified as key elements in the discourse of those white Britons who seek to justify prejudice (Valentine and McDonald, Reference Valentine and McDonald2004). Elsewhere, work also highlights that racially motivated harassment is part of the everyday experience of many A8 migrants; particularly those of Roma origin with darker skin (Cook et al., Reference Cook, Dwyer and Waite2012). The continuing existence of overtly racist views, and the contrived ways in which they operate within some majority white communities, is graphically illustrated by one of our Roma respondents who explained that he had few problems with his neighbours – once they had realised he was not of Pakistani origin.

Within the white residents’ focus group, participants were keen to state that racism had little to do with their concerns about the impact of A8 migration. However, it needs to be recognised that, on occasions, some within this group drew upon racist stereotypes to justify their position. Most notably, one person referred to the criminal tendencies of some Eastern Europeans and cited the ‘robust action’ of the Italian authorities (following a murder of an Italian national) to support his view that migrants involved in criminal activity should face deportation.

It is not our intention to make excuses for racists, or to downplay the impact of racism. However, despite the examples noted above, it would be wrong to view the concerns expressed by the majority of respondents as simple expressions of xenophobic intolerance. Across the focus groups with established community members, the most dominant concern was that new migrants ultimately increase competition for the limited jobs and finite welfare resources available to local residents. Fearing that A8 migration would be detrimental to their future needs (as the finite resources within the citizenship ‘pot’ become more thinly spread), many members within establish communities embark on a defensive engagement of what they perceive to be the primacy of ‘their’ claims, as established local residents, by prioritising ‘their’ rights as national citizens above and beyond any supra-national rights that may accrue to A8 migrants by virtue of their new European citizenship status.