Opinion

Newton Emerson: Loss of EU workers would have impact well beyond agrifood sector

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson

Newton Emerson writes a twice-weekly column for The Irish News and is a regular commentator on current affairs on radio and television.

Some of the jobs EU migrants are doing include roles within agriculture
Some of the jobs EU migrants are doing include roles within agriculture Some of the jobs EU migrants are doing include roles within agriculture

“They took our jobs” might be the expected reaction to a Department for the Economy report this week, showing EU migrants filled almost all the additional posts created in Northern Ireland over the past decade.

Between 2008 and 2016 the total number of jobs increased by 36,000 while the number of workers from the EU, excluding the UK and Ireland, rose by 34,000.

Employment among UK-born citizens actually fell by 10,000 over the same period.

There are now around 80,000 EU accession state migrants in Northern Ireland.

The fact that these remarkable figures were met with a shrug may reflect an understanding that migrants are only taking jobs we will no longer do.

This perception has settled over us as something of a cliché but it is fully supported by the facts.

National Insurance data shows EU migrants are concentrated in Craigavon, Dungannon and Newry, where they work in agriculture and food processing.

For years it has been almost impossible to retain UK and Irish citizens in these jobs. One of the agrifood sector’s main concerns about Brexit is how staff will be recruited without free movement of labour.

If these factories closed the rest of us would certainly notice - they sustain well-paid jobs across the rest of the economy and pay significant business rates.

However, the direct financial impact most people in the affected towns might notice would be the loss of rent.

This is the most interesting aspect, economically and socially, of the changes brought by EU migration.

A 2014 report for the Housing Executive found the vast majority of migrant workers live in private rented accommodation, primarily in town centre neighbourhoods.

So why no cry of “they took our houses?” The same report found the native population moved out to new developments constructed during the housing boom up to 2008.

Since the start of that boom and the accession of eastern European states to the EU in 2004, the number of privately rented dwellings in Northern Ireland has tripled to 123,000, with most of that increase due to amateur landlords owning one or two properties each.

What that has meant in Dungannon, Newry and Craigavon are rings of modern suburbs where people pay the mortgage on their new house with rent they collect from migrant workers, often living in their previous home.

It would be fascinating to know how many of those tenants are also doing their landlord’s previous job.

A fragile class of tenant labourers raises uncomfortable historical parallels, which is perhaps why we rarely mention it.

More recent history gives Northern Ireland another unique feature. Superficially, the nature and scale of our EU immigration mirrors agricultural areas of eastern England, yet we have witnessed little of the tensions evident there at the perceived ‘takeover’ of town centres.

The depopulation of our town centres during the Troubles must have lessened resentment at their repopulation by immigrants.

Excess school places in Northern Ireland have helped absorb the effect of immigration on public services - a toxic issue in England. The most ethnically diverse school in Northern Ireland is a Catholic primary in the middle of Portadown. Problems with health services in Craigavon and Newry are too obviously due to staffing issues to be blamed on overseas patients.

Portadown and Lurgan have the additional advantage, if that is the word, of having their retail cores hollowed out by Craigavon’s out-of-town shopping centre.

Businesses catering to EU immigrants, and frequently run by them, have sprung up to fill the void but this creates no sense of displacement. Most people are grateful to see commercial activity of any kind.

I have not lived in Portadown, my home town, for 15 years. A trip back is a striking experience, given that foreigners were so rare there during my childhood that the few families in question enjoyed celebrity status.

Today, my former neighbourhood is entirely populated by immigrants and the town centre is largely frequented by them. Everyone else drives between the suburbs and the shopping centre, oblivious. Migrant workers rarely drive - so many cycle to work that the bike paths to the factories have had to be widened.

The missing reaction to all of this is from the migrants themselves.

We have corralled them into a handful of our old town centres, leading the meanest of our old lives, and that is where our interest and interaction with them generally ends.

How bizarre a 21st century experience it must be to find yourself the peasantry to Northern Ireland’s provincial ascendancy.

newton@irishnews.com