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Immigration, free movement and the EU referendum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jonathan Portes
Jonathan Portes*
Affiliation:
National Institute of Economic and Social Research
*
E-mail: j.portes@niesr.ac.uk
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Abstract

Immigration and free movement are central issues in the UK's referendum on EU membership. Although free movement was a founding principle of the EU, it only became of central economic and political importance after the expansion of the EU eastward in 2004. For the UK, the economic impacts of recent EU migration appear to have been relatively benign, even for the low paid and low skilled. The UK's recent ‘renegotiation’, which focused on the largely irrelevant issue of ‘benefit tourism’, will make little difference. A vote to Leave, however, will potentially take us into new territory for UK immigration policy,

Keywords

immigrationfree movementEuropean UnionF22J61N34
Type
Research Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 236 , May 2016 , pp. 14 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

This paper draws heavily on Rolfe and Hudson-Sharp (2016, forthcoming). I am grateful to Heather Rolfe (NIESR) and Catherine Barnard (University of Cambridge) for helpful comments. Funding in support of this research was provided by the ESRC's UK in a Changing Europe programme, of which the author is a Senior Fellow.

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