Benign Neglect? Policies to Support Upward Mobility for Immigrants in the United Kingdom
Immigrants to the United Kingdom, a popular destination for migrants from within and outside the European Union, benefit from the country’s flexible labor market and skills system with multiple points of entry. But the United Kingdom’s “work-first” approach to professional development, coupled with limited opportunities to advance into middle-skilled jobs, has left many immigrants stuck on the lowest rung of the ladder.
A new report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), Benign Neglect? Policies to Support Upward Mobility for Immigrants in the United Kingdom, assesses how effectively employment services and integration policies are helping migrants advance from low-skilled work or unemployment into middle-skilled jobs.
While the United Kingdom has not traditionally targeted policies at immigrants, instead serving them via general programs, budget cuts and public hostility toward immigration in recent years have made the government even more hesitant to target immigrants with specific integration measures. Immigrants are left relying on mainstream public services, which have been dramatically rolled back in some cases. Policymakers have slashed public funding for vocational training and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes, leaving their provision up to employers who may not be inclined to pay for such services.
The report, by Rachel Marangozov, examines the ways that other policies and contextual factors often undermine migrants’ entry into the labor market and progression out of low-skilled jobs, including difficulty navigating a complex and ever-changing workforce development system and low demand for training in some sectors, particularly those with high turnover.
KJ