In recent years there has been rapid growth in net migration to the UK, and Eastern European (A8) migration has been much higher than was anticipated.
There is a significant gap in the understanding of the size and profile of the migrant worker population and their motivations for choosing to settle in the West Midlands Region. Likewise there is little known about the effect of migrants on resident workers.
To deal with this information gap, the West Midlands Regional Observatory, acting on behalf of a group of regional partners, has undertaken a major study into the economic impact of migrant workers in the West Midlands Region.
This research does five things:
- It quantifies the extent of migrant workers in the region and profile demography, economic activity, household composition etc.
- It assesses the impact migrant worker activity is having on the West Midlands’ economy, labour market and native UK workers.
- It investigates migrant workers’ attitudes and motivations for coming to the UK, and specifically the West Midlands. Likewise, it investigates the rationale of employers for employing migrant workers and see to what extent migrant workers’ plans may change during their time in the UK.
- It assess the implications of the above strands on the skills and training provision in the Region, both for native and migrant workers.
- It provides information that will support other policy areas in assessing the impact of migrant workers on other specified key services and areas of public life – specifically housing, health and community cohesion.
The results of the study are being used by the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to inform future provision of training and qualifications related support for economic migrants, and by Advantage West Midlands (the regional development agency) to inform their work on the West Midlands Economic Strategy.
The results were published on the 26th November 2007.
Sub-regional results
This is a regional project, but results are also available from it at sub-regional level.
The main report concentrates on the regional picture, but also gives results by LSC area. It contains partial information at local authority (LA) level.
The desk study, which was based on official data, does most of its analysis and reporting at LA level.
If further data collection is required at local level then we recommend studying the technical report (PDF, 1.68mb) as this gives the full methodology and supporting material for the field work and will allow data collection that can be directly compared with that already obtained from the project.