The coronavirus in Europe has been par excellence a western European affair, in that the advanced democracies and economies of the continent have suffered the biggest blow in terms of cases and deaths compared with the less advanced countries of south and eastern Europe. As is well known, those countries worst hit by the virus are the most popular destinations for intra-European migration from the East and the South of Europe for the past three decades. Among these the UK, home to large numbers of European migrants was badly hit by the virus. The switching off of the UK economy, like in all other countries, led to an unprecedented economic contraction and a dramatic rise of joblessness across all walks of life. This opinion piece looks at the vulnerable European migrants who, having lost their jobs, were neither protected by the UK government’s furloughing scheme nor were likely to benefit, in the medium or longer term, by other financial measures aimed to save businesses and avoid mass unemployment.
Many of these migrant workers, for instance, were working in the hospitality sector of the UK economy, primarily in the accommodation and food industries, which were the very first to be hit by the coronavirus and are expected to be the last to recover from it. The overwhelming majority of these migrants in these sectors are young people, in their 20s and 30s, existing in highly precarious circumstances: many of them are in short term employment contracts, they are not members of trade unions, they don’t own their own property, they live in privately rented accommodation, away from their families, most of the time sharing a flat often in overcrowded circumstances, and they don’t have enough savings to last them long.
According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, in the UK around 9% of EU workers are employed in accommodation and food compared to 5% of UK workers. But the vulnerable European migrants include other categories as well, such as those who are self-employed with their own small businesses, those with temporary contracts which were interrupted, or those working in the informal economy. For all of them, Brexit makes their uncertainty even more agonising especially for the ones who have not yet applied for the settled or pre-settled immigration status and with the highly selective and controversial point-based immigration system on the near horizon.
