United Kingdom

Abstract

When one compares the UK situation with that of other North European countries, there are very distinctive patterns of migration, and of policies and legal responses by government towards migratory movements that make the British experience of migration somewhat different from that of France, Switzerland or Germany, the major countries of European immigration in this generation. In the 1970s, 10 per cent of the labour force in France was foreign; in Switzerland 30 per cent. In Britain, by comparison, the proportion of foreign workers has been relatively small. Between 1965 and 1980 immigrants accounted for as much as half the population expansion in Germany, while in Britain they accounted for only a fifth, at a time when the birth rates of the two indigenous populations were declining. The impact of labour migrants on the British economy has been statistically small in comparison with France, Germany or Switzerland.