Media Storm - S2E9 “Low-skilled”: The exploitation of Eastern European workers - with Alex Bulat

Starting point is 00:00:00 So, Brexit. Oh my God. Can we not? Do we have to? Do we have to? Can we not? I'm sorry, we do. We managed to avoid it quite well, but Brexit is kind of the pivotal moment in today's story. Because we're looking at central and eastern Europeans, how they're treated in Western Europe, but especially the UK. Right. And a lot of the Brexit debate hinged on immigration and this question of free movement with in the EU. Take back control. I mean, I feel that mantra was directed against a lot of migrant groups. For example, asylum seekers crossing the channel. But definitely a lot of Brexit support was rooted in this kind of fear of people taking our jobs, foreign workers willing to work for less

Starting point is 00:00:48 money than Brits. Exactly. Free movement, which we had in the EU, enabled low paid workers to come to the UK, but only low paid workers from the EU. And so EU, migrants, particularly central and Eastern Europeans, have been the most likely to fill these lower paid roles in sectors like agriculture, warehousing, retail, and so on. And that's the type of labour I want to look at today. Labour that has been dubbed low-skilled by the government and excluded from the post-Brexit points-based visa system. And whenever we say low-skilled in this episode, it will be with very big quotation marks. Okay, so first, taught me through that new immigration system. So the UK's immigration system after Brexit introduces visa requirements for EU citizens

Starting point is 00:01:36 who had previously been able to work here in any job. That means low-skilled jobs that used to be filled largely by Eastern EU workers are now closed to foreigners. Okay. And I can see the logic that forces employers to recruit workers at home, which may mean having to put their wages up to make the job more attractive, improving working conditions, and in theory, reducing unemployment here in the UK? Yeah, in theory. And in practice? Okay, it's a complicated question and it will take some years before we can really assess the consequences properly. But in a nutshell, yes and no. Wow, how helpful. Um, okay, unemployment, yes. Remembering that any changes in our economy reflect the combined effects of Brexit, a global pandemic, a war, you know, those

Starting point is 00:02:28 small things. A recovering post-pandemic economy can be expected to see a lot of hiring happening, yes. But it's true that unemployment is and has been at record lows and vacancies are highest in sectors traditionally filled with EU workers. Wages, though less so, early evidence suggests that while a few employers are raising wages to fill vacancies, the vast majority just aren't. And also the whole idea that more vacancy means less unemployment equals good news. It's not strictly true because in some sectors, what we're seeing is far too many vacancies. Right, like HGV driving. Yes, exactly.

Starting point is 00:03:12 You probably remember very smug European headlines about a desperate post-Brexit Britain begging long-lost EU migrants to come back and drive our HDVs. Yeah, remember that. You might also remember interviews with pig farmers who had to slaughter thousands of animals after Brexit due to a lack of abattoir workers and butchers. Yeah, that too. And behind the scenes, employers seeking hospitality workers, airport staff, care workers, forklift drivers, cleaners, the list goes on, have been pressurising the government to go back

Starting point is 00:03:41 on its decision to eradicate low-paid, so-called low-skilled work visas. I see. So it could be that Brits simply don't want to do those jobs or that these sectors grew thanks to the availability of foreign workers. Which would mean that the government's classification of skilled and unskilled labour might not actually reflect the economic value of that labour. Given that these jobs are typically filled by Eastern EU workers, it is important to ask why they are the ones who've been devalued and demonised as low-skilled undesirables and we're going to look more closely at that kind of prejudice question in next week's bonus episode. In today's investigation, I have another inquiry, which is if we still

Starting point is 00:04:25 have the same demand for this cheap foreign labour, but we don't have the same legal routes to bring that labour over, can we expect to see an increase in illegal entry and undocumented black market labour instead? Interestingly, exactly the opposite of the high wage economy and illegal immigration crackdown the government has promised to deliver. My question? Post-Brexit, are we seeing a shift from a low-paid migrant workforce to a better-paid local one? Or are we seeing a shift from a low-paid legal migrant workforce to a lower-paid illegal one? This episode will meet the predominantly Eastern Europeans plugging Britain's low-skilled labour shortages

Starting point is 00:05:11 and ask if exploitation is on the rise. And I'll see you back in the studio with a very special guest to discuss everything around this media storm. We will be taking back control. The largest group of small boats migrants are from Albania. Many of them claim to be trafficked as modern slaves. End low-skilled migration to our country. Following the Brexit boat, there's been a surge in reports of hate crime.

Starting point is 00:05:36 What do you go against Romania? Nothing, but I've got a problem with Romania. Very big problem with Romania. Welcome to Media Storm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked last. I'm Mattelda Mallinson and I'm Helena Wadia. This week's investigation, low-skilled, the exploitation of Eastern European Labour. Three, two, one. January 2020.

Starting point is 00:06:01 For the government, it's an historic moment that marks the end of the free movement of people. Britain left the EU. Breaking news. This was hinged on the issue of free movement. movement, the perceived economic or identity threat of immigration from EU countries. Some countries, perhaps more than others. I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next door to you, would you be concerned? What about if a group of German children did? What's the difference? The difference and you know what the difference is. No, I honestly don't. Mass immigration,

Starting point is 00:06:31 particularly from Eastern Europe, has had, you know, devastating effects. We have a total open door to 10 former communist countries. Low-skilled European workers like these Romanian builders. The UK's new points-based immigration system refuses visas for jobs paid under 25.5,000 per year. This was pledged to prevent exploitation to drive up wages and encourage local hiring, as I discussed with Helena in the introduction. But many employers have struggled to fill these jobs in hospitality, retail, warehousing. We're the closest not coping than we've ever been. I'm turning orders away today because we haven't got the staff to cut them. Plenty of salad, but nowhere near enough pluckers or packers.

Starting point is 00:07:09 Some employers have started turning to radical measures. People won't like to hear it, but we do now have an ask-no-question hiring policy for lots of our cleaners. One cleaning company manager told me they have resorted to hiring many of their, mostly Eastern European workforce, illegally. My source is anonymous and has been revoiced by an actor. British people don't want the work we're offering, and there are Bulgarians and Romanians who do. Demand for our services has always been there. It's just a question of how we meet it. I'm Lucila Granada and I'm the chief executive of an organization called Flex, which stands for focus on labor exploitation.

Starting point is 00:07:49 From what you've seen, has the government achieved its stated aim of getting British employers to hire locally and pay more by reducing the supply of low wage foreign labor? I mean, obviously for this, we would need to look at sector by sector and see how the trends develop over time. But when it comes to agriculture, we can. and unfortunately give a clear answer and the answer would be no. One of the biggest sweet corn and squash growers in the country. Serious shortages of skilled staff, particularly machine operators, fault lift drivers. The government did anticipate this particular labour shortage

Starting point is 00:08:22 and introduced a special visa in 2019. The seasonal agricultural workers visa is the only visa designed to bring migrant workers into low-wage work. It was modelled on an old scheme that was discontinued in 2013 due to the ready availability of Romanian and Bulgarian agricultural workers from the EU. What the government did not anticipate was the scale of demand for the scheme. Originally capped at 2,500 workers, it quadrupled to 10,000 in 2020, tripled to 30,000 in 2021, and has now been expanded to 40,000 places.

Starting point is 00:08:59 After end of free movements, Ukrainians were the vast majority on the scheme, and they still are. But obviously, this fell really quickly with the war. Since Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, men of fighting age have been required to stay at home. The gaps have been filled with other former USSR states. And as with under free movement, Bulgarians and Romanians. So the seasonal visa is a temporary migration route. But unlike under free movement and unlike skilled work visas granted through the points-based immigration system, The seasonal workers scheme restricts movements between jobs, doesn't allow workers to bring family members or access benefits, withholds long-term integration and permanent residence routes, and requires workers to leave after six months.

Starting point is 00:09:47 Flex immediately flagged that such a temporary scheme comes with a high risk of exploitation. Workers will have less time to understand their rights, to know where to seek help, to join a union. And indeed on inspection, the pilot scheme in 2019. was found to yield unacceptable welfare conditions. We went out to farms and to speak to workers. Workers from Ukraine, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Moldova gave evidence of exploitation on this scheme. The original audio is protected for their safety,

Starting point is 00:10:21 so I've asked friends and family to re-voice them. There is no first aid and water. There is no water in the fields. They testified to inhumane working conditions on the farm. They sent us to go weeding, but didn't give us gloves. Neither any equipment or tools. We worked on weeding for three days. We dug the ground by naked hands. Zero-hour contracts. Every day is like a lottery. Like a roulette. We don't know how much we'll earn a day.

Starting point is 00:10:48 Degrading accommodation. Our caravan is full of mould. The walls are mouldy. Our mattress is mouldy. We sleep on mould. Accommodation for which they have to pay. For unknown reasons to us, they are taking penalty money from the deposit. It doesn't matter how much you earn. They will charge you for accommodation, so at the end of the story, you'll owe the farm money. We are all trapped. We have no choice. We paid money in order to come here. Now we must get this money back. Our families cannot pay our tickets back because they have no money. Therefore, we all feel trapped. To actually access this visa and come work on British farms, workers need to pay an application fee to the home office of £259.

Starting point is 00:11:29 under the scheme it's several days work just to make that money back. Some improvements have been made since its introduction. The government banned zero-hour contracts and introduced a minimum wage, but enforcement remains a problem. For any worker trying to make a claim to employment tribunal, you will have to seriously consider the amount of time that you will need to wait and many times without income. You know, they're here for six months. The waiting times for employment tribunals is longer than that. The hostile environment policies for migrants means that you can be detained, deported, that your assets can be confiscated if you end up working without a permit. Many times, you know, staying in an abusive workplace will be their

Starting point is 00:12:15 best option. Lucila, we've talked specifically about agriculture today, but are there other sectors experiencing the same labor shortages that haven't had temporary visas introduced. There are a number of sectors, as you say. So some of the sectors would be food manufacturing, cleaning, construction, warehousing and logistics, hospitality. Via reactionary, under-supervised temporary schemes, low-paid migrants are being treated as commodities, brought in to plug gaps and then sent away. What is emerging is a two-tiered workforce, with working-class migrants cut off from the same rights as everyone else. Yet it is important to note that Flex isn't campaigning for an end to the seasonal scheme.

Starting point is 00:13:04 It is much better that having no route at all into the country because the demand would still be there and that would create in itself a risk of irregularity. You know, there's a lot of pressure for industry. There's a need for a regular route into agriculture. We have this scheme. it can be improved significantly. A risk of irregularity. By this, Lucilla is pointing to the employment of workers with no visas at all,

Starting point is 00:13:31 undocumented work, aka the black market. Here, there are no labour rights for workers, yet for some, conditions on the temporary visas are so bad, they have opted to work with no visas at all. The visa operator promised to provide us with work, housing, health and accident insurance, and financial assistance if we got COVID-19. We were deceived at every stage. One such worker calls herself Oksana and is being voiced for us by a Ukrainian actor.

Starting point is 00:14:02 Let's see. So she is a highly intelligent, highly qualified Ukrainian woman who came to the UK together with her partner to work on a farm. Oksana approached the charity Work Rights Centre to share her story. Dora Olivia Vichol, their CEO, helped. her edited into English. She described having to pick apples at a rate that was just simply not possible. Through threats and humiliation, people are forced to work tirelessly, wearing off the skin on their hands and feet till it bled. People's health was completely jeopardized. Their

Starting point is 00:14:36 backs were injured, some hit nausea, vomiting, some girls had pain in their lower abdomen, and sometimes bleeding. And then being penalized for failing to meet that quota. When many of the workers on the campsite decided to protest against working and living conditions. Everyone involved was punished by being suspended for a week. They would punish people for everything. The visa operator began to constantly threaten people that they would be deported. So that prompted her to take a very difficult and radical decision. Everyone has spent a lot of money on work clothes, shoes, medicines, bedding, pots, plates, everything they had requested on the list. We have also spent money on the visa and the flight. They effectively thought they had no choice, but to work outside the farm, breaking the conditions

Starting point is 00:15:23 of their visas, becoming undocumented, just so that they could recoup the money they'd spent. Gradually, people left to work illegally in the cities. So she ended up working in cleaning, her partner ended up working in construction. I work from seven and a half to 14 hours a day. Every day, I breathe in chemicals, burning my skin and airways. These are two very gendered trajectories that, you know, my colleagues and I have seen reproduced over and over, whether it's Ukrainians or Romanians or Bulgarians or Poles. It is mentally difficult to work as a cleaner when having two university degrees, and it is impossible to get a normal job, being a nobody without papers.

Starting point is 00:16:00 Effectively, when you're undocumented and when people know that you're undocumented, you are at the whim of employers. Any client or employer can accuse us of anything and not pay for work at all. They could be overworked for as many hours as the employer wanted. They could be paid at whatever rate the employer wanted. I met many people from Ukraine who have worked on different farms. There are no happy stories. Everyone runs away.

Starting point is 00:16:27 Dora, Olivia, have you seen or do you expect to see the end of free movement exacerbate these labour exploitation issues? And particularly when it comes to Eastern Europeans like Oksana. My colleagues on the frontline theme are definitely seeing an increase in cases where people are working without having the right to work and this exposes them to a whole range of issues. This is a picture we're likely to see build up in the next few months and years

Starting point is 00:16:55 because the post-Brexit reality is still just coming into focus. Your organisation isn't alone in flagging this possible added likelihood of exploitation in the current labour market. Now, our government has recently blamed the rise in reports of modern slavery on false claims and are saying that as a result, they plan to actually restrict access

Starting point is 00:17:18 to the protections under the Modern Slavery Act. What do you make of this? I mean, the whole premise that an increase in claims means that people are gaining the system is so dangerous and so damaging. It's so hard to get anyone to report labour exploitation, and it really is in the UK's interest to get workers to report labour exploitation. The last thing you should want to do is to deal. dissuade people from reporting exploitation.

Starting point is 00:17:45 So what I'm getting is increased risk of labour exploitation, decreased legal protections. Yeah, that's exactly right. You could describe this as a perfect storm for labour exploitation. Economic exploitation goes hand in hand with political exclusion. That is the argument of Polish migrants charity, Polish migrants organised for change. I'll start. Hi, I'm Marjana Jukowska. I am a queer, non-binary Polish immigrant. Hi, everyone. So I'm

Starting point is 00:18:20 Magda Fabianchik. I came to the UK 20 years ago, over 20 years ago. Having access to kind of the basic services, the basic rights, housing, work, it's all very much linked to voting rights and democratic participation and the ability to be a part of a community. One thing that we hear over and over from people is that political parties are simply not engaging with them. And I think part of this is because many of the communities we work with are seen as not worth engaging with. There really needs to be more effort put into engaging Eastern European communities, but they have to do it in collaboration with Eastern European leaders. Polish communities and Eastern European communities, we make up one of the largest migrant populations in the UK. And yet we're completely

Starting point is 00:19:09 invisible and marginalized from public life, right? If you look at the number of MPs, the number of local counselors who are of Eastern European ancestry, it's very few. And so when we show up knocking on the door, speaking Polish, talking to them about elections, people are surprised, sometimes startled, but also really, really interested. And so this myth that they don't want to engage with politics is completely untrue. A bit of Chopin, a Polish favorite, donated to us by pianist Anait Karpova. The separation of Central and Eastern Europeans from other EU or low-paid migrants in this episode may feel a little arbitrary, and you'd be right to flag that, because many populations are vulnerable

Starting point is 00:20:00 to exploitation in the same way. We're just honing in on one aspect today, because there is a particular the nature to the prejudice targeting central and eastern Europeans. There was a strong sense that Polish people, that they were beneath English people in terms of the work that they did. And as a result, they were there to be exploited. We'll be exploring that prejudice more thoroughly in a bonus episode featuring Kash Tomashevich, who you just heard and others. But it's true, this cannot be defined as an Eastern European problem alone. It fits into a much wider question. question about how we view and how we use migrants in general.

Starting point is 00:20:42 I mean, the UK immigration system, it's always been very responsive and defensive and ad hoc. Dagma Mazinska, sociologist. So another example would be windrash, right? There is a labor need, right? After World War II, the Windrush generation comes over. And when it comes to Eastern Europeans, there was a need for cheap workers, essentially. And then there were economic concerns in the UK and some people were dissatisfied again with the political leadership. So this group became a very easy way for politicians

Starting point is 00:21:14 to divert attention from their own mismanagement of the country and the economy and just blame it on the outsiders. It's just a never-ending story, unfortunately. If this, quote, low-skilled work, is work that we value. if these are workers that we need, why doesn't our immigration system reflect that? Why don't our politicians admit that and what could the press be doing to examine that better?

Starting point is 00:21:46 That takes us back to the studio. Thanks for sticking around. Welcome back to the studio and to Media Storm, the podcast that starts with the people who are usually asked last. Today, we are talking about exploitation and prejudice against central and eastern Europeans, and with us is a very special guest. She's a consultant and co-founder of the Migrant Democracy Project working for greater participation of migrants in UK politics. She's a project manager at Polish migrants organised for change and a Labour councillor in Cambridge for the Abbey Ward. She's also the co-founder of Migrants for Labor. It's Alex Bullitt.

Starting point is 00:22:36 Hello, thanks for having me. Do you ever sleep? Because that is a lot of stuff you're doing. Yes, it is indeed. I remember when I ran for election and I had three different project-based part-time jobs, it was probably the most busiest time of my life. So it has kept very busy since.

Starting point is 00:22:53 Probably not as busy as election time, though. Amazing, wow. Well, in the first half of this episode, we learned that our new points-based immigration system comes with some new risks of labour exploitation and that central and eastern Europeans are heavily affected. Our bonus episode, which is coming soon, also finds that these demographics have always been at high risk of exploitation in the UK and that prejudices against them are often found in inherently exploitative stereotypes, e.g. Polish plumber tropes, ideas of low-skilled migrants stealing

Starting point is 00:23:29 our jobs or in women's cases as prostitutes. So what's the nature of this prejudice and what explains why British employers are so ready to exploit Eastern European workers and why British laws are so indifferent to this exploitation? You know, is it a form of xenophobia or of racism? Is it about geopolitics? Is it about class? Alex, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I think with a lot of the questions of migration, it's a mix of all the factors. But I think what is underpinning it all is this narrative that migrants are welcome to the UK as long as they're useful. And this understanding that as long as they're useful means as long as they satisfy what we understand by having an economic contribution. But we have seen this narrative really shift during COVID, where the previously

Starting point is 00:24:23 blamed low-paid migrant workers became some of the key workers, the essential workers in our economy. So it was for the first time, I think, when the pandemic started, when I heard, for instance, some politicians praising supermarket workers or delivery drivers, and many of those workers are of migrants' backgrounds. If you think about a hospital, a hospital cannot function without the, you know, top-paying surgeons and doctors, but it also cannot function without the cleaners. We're actually essential to make the hospital a safe place for the doctors to work and for the patients to be in. And I think it tells you a lot about how do we value certain, you know, certain types of work just because someone happened to be in a privileged enough position to go

Starting point is 00:25:07 to university, to, you know, land like an internship that will land them like a better job in the first place. I think you really put your finger on it when you say, migrants are welcome as long as they're useful. But it's really curious that in this case, we've decided that the migrants that aren't useful and aren't welcome are, quote, low-skilled. because what the investigation shows is they actually are very useful to so many sectors in our economy, which are now kind of crumbling without them. There's something really sinister and really clasped about basically saying that workers who are low-paid don't deserve the same access to rights as people who are high-paid.

Starting point is 00:25:46 And that's just a kind of very archaic form of elitism. And I think that the reason I'm pointing that out is because we import this labour and then we view people doing that labour as servants. You know, people who are here working as domestic workers, cleaners, are some of the worst treated. And so I think that not only do we feel entitled to that labour, we feel entitled to treat that labour as secondary citizenship. That brings us kind of onto the next question,

Starting point is 00:26:10 which is this concept of economic migrants and how much fearmongering, how much demonisation we've seen of that group. Because, yes, it's a valid issue that people in certain working, our sectors feel inordinate competition for jobs because of wages being lowered by the importation of cheap foreign labor. This is horrible terminology, but to reiterate the public conversation. But that problem has definitely been overblown. You almost never see politicians in this day and age stating the economic benefits or necessities of immigration, even opposition parties, I think, shy away from it. Do you feel that politicians are honest in how they talk about

Starting point is 00:26:52 immigration. And if not, why not? I think on the one hand, there are some politicians who just deliberately avoid the topic. And that's often to do with the fact that there is this kind of, like, in a way, in many ways, an imagines target voter population who is imagined to be, you know, quite anti-immigration. It doesn't mean that everyone who voted for Brexit in Red Wall City is necessarily against a better immigration system. I think the other issue that, I mean, there's a failure in general of politics to link migration with all the other issues that matter to all of us. So, for example, when we speak about housing and how do we plan council housing, for example, or how do we look at the private rental sector, how many times do we hear migrant voices in those

Starting point is 00:27:38 debates? So I think it's about actually trying to, not only to speak about migration in terms of the stereotypes or the controversial policy areas, but actually linking migration with all the other policy areas that matter to all of us that affects migrant residents in the same way as British residents. Those are residents who are, you know, paying the same council tax as British residents. And of course, they should be part of this debate as residents in the first place, as residents in the UK and then as people of migrant background as well. Right. And what I hear from so much of that is that there's such a lack of nuance in the quote unquote debate. Those tropes that we've mentioned about low-skill labour and economic migrants, they're some

Starting point is 00:28:18 the most common terms that the mainstream media use when they're talking about immigration and the economy. So do you think the media are complicit in presenting these debates is just two binary? And then what happens from there is they stereotype marginalized groups. And then that is ultimately playing into those political narratives. Yes, I think it's difficult to say if it's a deliberate narrative being constructed. But of course, the media does work with the political cycle as well. So if you have politicians saying more and more outrageous things about immigration, of course, those are the articles that will get traction. So, you know, we all remember in the time of the Brexit referendum, the comments of Nigel Farage, for example, about Romanians when he was

Starting point is 00:28:59 in the interview with James O'Brien suggesting that, you know, perhaps I would be afraid living next to Romanian neighbors and that kind of comment, although it was in a context of, you know, in that case, James O'Brien challenging Nigel Farage about his assumption about Romanians that kind of still made pretty much all the headlines. And I think this happens to a lot of the politicians comment, something that said in a certain context. And then the headlines just read, okay, so-and-so politicians said this thing about this particular group, whether it's Romanians or Polish people or low-skilled migrants or low-paid migrants in general. And these kind of those stereotypes get reproduced, the more, you know, the more people share the article or just to

Starting point is 00:29:37 only read the headline. Linked to that as well is the fact that there are actually very few migrant voices, especially first generation migrants, people who arrived more recently, especially from Central and Eastern Europe, in the media, how many people who are the people who are usually quoted in the media come from that background? And of course, how many people who are in journalism, in the profession, come from that background as well. And I think all those things result into this limited voices of Central and Eastern Europeans in the media. Yeah, which brings it back to this issue of lived experience, which is what Media Storm is all about and the fact that those voices are so excluded, it feeds into this otherization,

Starting point is 00:30:17 which isn't reflective of reality and it can be really, really harmful to people. While we're on the media and the Brexit referendum, you mentioned Alex. There's a feeling I can't help shaking, which is that the media isn't really reporting properly on the consequences of Brexit. And I'm saying this, not from the angle of, oh, terrible Brexit. Yeah, just get over it already and move on. Reporting on the potential economic fallout consequences of Brexit isn't to say whether or not they will be damaging in the long term. It's not to say whether or not joining the EU or customs union or single market is something

Starting point is 00:30:56 that we need. It's not about that. It's just a question of truth and accuracy. And I feel like so many media are refusing to analyze properly the role that Brexit has played in the fact that the UK's inflation is higher than other G7 countries. You know, it isn't all being explained by international phenomena like the pandemic or like the war in Ukraine. There are specific UK factors that are making our situation more extreme. And yeah, no one wants to be accused of trying to turn over the referendum by voters. So is this something you feel?

Starting point is 00:31:31 Do you feel that Brexit has been properly reported on in our media or not? Yeah, I think it's a really interesting debate on. on Brexit because in many ways we reached a stage where just being a bit critical about specifically how Brexit has been implemented immediately equals being against Brexit. I think it's a very important differentiation to make, not everyone who is critical of how this specific government now is implementing Brexit and the consequence of that is actually necessarily against the idea itself. I think it's interesting when you compare how this situation,

Starting point is 00:32:09 the UK is reported in some of the international press. So for instance, as someone from Romania originally, I do follow a bit of the Romanian media. And a few of the articles on staff shortages or like kind of any articles on migration do speak a bit more openly about Brexit. And if you see the comments, many people comment about, well, like now that Romanians and Polish people are not coming in such greater numbers. So I would have those issues in, you know, the NHS, in social care, in agriculture. And I think it's a bit, there's a bit more honest in terms of linking migration.

Starting point is 00:32:39 to that. Yeah, absolutely. I just think it's almost just really sad how, like, one of the main focuses of UK media in the lead up to the Brexit referendum was immigration from Eastern European countries. And there was so much, I mean, there was so much just outright lying about opening our borders in inverted commas. And I don't know, I guess I just have never seen the, like, apologies or the consequences of that lying like when politicians for example boris johnson uh you know were putting lies on a massive bus there was some of the media calling it out but almost the damage was almost done because those lies made headlines and it just kind of seeped into public consciousness and yeah i just think it's just really sad that there was just

Starting point is 00:33:36 no consequence for that yeah there's something really problematic about the way that the media just makes headlines out of what politicians say, however flagrantly fictional they might be, that this is a problem in our media and that it's so easy to produce quick, click-heavy content from a controversial quote. And any fact-checking is really, really secondary priority to actually getting media traction. Exactly. And so it's so much easier for a lie to spread than it is a correction. Exactly. A lot of the workers that we heard from in this episode

Starting point is 00:34:16 who are facing exploitation in the UK have come from Ukraine and Belarus, two populations who have featured very favourably in Western media in the recent past. The uprising of Belarusians against President Alexander Lukashenko in 2020 and 2021 saw a tidal wave of solidarity from foreign media. Outlets ranging from the Daily Mail to the New York Times worked diligently to expose Lukashenko's brutal crackdown, uplift the efforts of local activists and pressurized governments to take action. Similarly, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine earlier this year has seen a Western media so in sense it's taken a very firm stance on the side of Ukrainian resistance fighters, it's vilified Putin more harshly than it's ever done before, and it's facilitated this way.

Starting point is 00:35:06 of local hospitality towards Ukrainian refugees, but even after these incidents, Belarusians and Ukrainians in the UK are among the top nationalities being exploited as seasonal workers. So when we see these waves of compassion in our media for Eastern European populations, is this a really cynical question or is that just so hypocritical? Yes, I think, I mean, we have seen, as you say, those waves of compassion. but unfortunately compassion is not properly matched with the policy implementation and commitments. So it's really interesting with the example of Ukrainians and especially the homes for Ukraine scheme because one of the issues discussed now in a lot of councils at the local level is what happens

Starting point is 00:35:53 when some of the relationships break down because in a lot of cases, I mean, what the policy does say is that anyone who can offer a spare room or a home for at least six months. So it's a very short time, six months can sign up. to the scheme. So what happens when someone arrives, for example, and everything is going very well at the beginning? And then there's a breakdown in the relationship. You live in a house with someone and something happens and you need to live. Actually, there's very little support in some areas around that. And Alex, this issue you're pointing to with Ukrainian refugees, either falling out of favor with the homes they're staying in or not knowing what to do after that six month's time

Starting point is 00:36:28 was up, these issues were flagged right at the beginning by NGOs who knew that they were going have to deal with the fallout of a policy that was all about numbers and all about optics and not actually thought through at all in execution. Even when this is framed as like really moralistic humanitarian outrage, it's also very influenced by political interests. Headlines and politicians saying they care doesn't always create positive change for people on the ground. Words mean nothing without action and we need to all play a role in holding to account leaders who say they're going to do something. Time now to look at headlines on this topic. We want to focus on comments made at the Conservative Party conference by the then Home Secretary. I know it's hard to keep track.

Starting point is 00:37:25 We've had about three and six weeks. But in this case, we're talking about Suella Braverman. These were comments made during the conference earlier this month and have inevitably dictated the focus of immigration debate ever since. There was an increased focus on Albanians as more and more Albanians are reaching the UK in small boats. Braverman said one of her priorities would be reforming the Modern Slavery Act because people, including Albanians, were gaming the system and pretending to be victims. So the headline we want to look at, which is just one example of the type of media coverage that followed these comments, is a comment in the express. The headline reads, illegal immigration is filling our prisons with Albanian criminals.

Starting point is 00:38:12 It must, in capital letters, stop. The first issue is the fact that this article is filled with simplistic monolithic associations such as Albanian criminals or Balkans mafiosi. Alex, what's the impact of this type of associative? stereotypical language. What impact those stereotypes have is not on the politicians who say this in the nice context of a panel in the Conservative Party conference or any other conference for that matter. It's on people from that community. So it means that when my Albanian friend who's a student, for example, is asked, where are you from? She may be thinking twice where to say this or not

Starting point is 00:38:54 because she may be expecting to have a negative stereotype thrown back at her in the same way when I arrived in 2012 in the UK. And around 2014, there were those big headlines about 29 Romanians and Bulgarians could come into the UK just like two years before Brexit. Then I really kind of thought twice if I was alone, let's say, at the bus stop and someone asked me what the time was and they were asking me, like, oh, you have an exit. Where are you from? I would actually think twice what I would say I'm from Romania or not. And I think that's not like a normal reaction we want to encourage of like avoiding to actually say who we are or where we're from because we fear to be attack to negative stereotypes. And I had this experience many times when they were like,

Starting point is 00:39:32 oh yeah, you know, like it's really surprising you're a student because Romanians, they're all, you know, low-skilled workers or they're all criminals or you'll have to kind of even justify your existence saying like, yeah, I know like this is said in the media and this is said by our top politicians, ex-home secretaries and so on. But actually like let me tell you why it's not true. And also on this article, once again, this is just a really key example of an article with absolutely zero lived experience sources. It's just Albanians being spoken about really horribly in the third person. And so even, you know, whether the claims about Albanians traveling here are right or wrong,

Starting point is 00:40:13 actually how are we even supposed to judge that and judge what's true when none of the coverage actually attempts to speak to an Albanian person making this journey. While we're talking about language and language in this article, I mean, the headline, it says illegal immigration. And yet again, I'm going to find myself having to explain why the media wrongly applies the term illegal in the context of immigration. In the first episode of our first ever series of this podcast, we looked at asylum seekers arriving in the UK and we pointed out that the term illegal migrants, which has been widely used by politicians in the press, it's actually not correct in legal terms or it wasn't correct in legal terms because it's a protected right under international humanitarian law that you can arrive in a country without papers in order to claim asylum. Nothing illegal about it.

Starting point is 00:41:06 I want to update people today because that issue has become a bit more complicated since our government introduced the Nationality and Borders Act, which passed in June and which seeks to criminalise even asylum seekers coming into this country without clearance. But the vast majority of boats coming are actually given clearance because they are directed as a matter of life and death under international maritime law to ports in the UK or they're rescued. And that means that as several court rulings have now determined in the UK, they are still not under the new law illegal. And the home office even admitted in a public letter that that term is correct and that we should now be referring to people coming in dinghies as, quote, arriving passengers. That letter

Starting point is 00:41:53 and that change of language was reported in the telegraph, it was widely reported in the press, and the press still continues to use the wrong term. And I just think that's really important for listeners to understand that these people are not illegal migrants under international law and still, despite the government's best efforts, under UK law. Matilda's turned red in anger. How many times?

Starting point is 00:42:20 And as well as troubling language, I mean, this article is, of all the same misinformation tropes we've pointed out in this episode about low-skilled immigration. I mean, it reads a points-based system was supposed to deliver the skilled immigrants of growing economy needs and then describes the people coming by contrast as young men jumping the queue to work in the black market. And so while busy demonising people coming here to do horrible jobs for very little money, it fails to highlight any of the systemic problems behind this, i.e. labor shortages combined with the lack of legal routes for low-paid workers. Yeah, it's just demonising individuals, especially vulnerable individuals, and ignoring systemic

Starting point is 00:43:03 problems. Alex, thank you so much for joining us here on Media Storm. Where can people follow you? And do you have anything that you want to plug? Well, a lot of things to plug as usual. But my person My personal Twitter is at Alexandra Bulat, BULAT. You can find me there commenting about migration and my local politics. And on Facebook, I actually have a counselor page. So if you're more interested in local council stuff, I'm at Labor Alex on Facebook. And yes, as we mentioned a bit before, I am the co-founder of the Migrant Democracy Project.

Starting point is 00:43:45 So if you are interested in that on Twitter, it's at Migrant Demos. and it's all about having a political home for migrants and having migrants involved in democracy and we're also campaigning for migrants to have the rights to vote in local elections, for all migrants to have the vote in local elections like they already do in Scotland and Wales. So if you're interested in that kind of campaign,

Starting point is 00:44:07 do follow at migrant demos on Twitter. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week with a bonus episode on this same topic, focusing on the roots of prejudice against Eastern Europeans and our next episode of Media Storm on Pollyamory will be out on the 10th of November.

Starting point is 00:44:27 Follow Media Storm wherever you get your podcast so that you can get access to new episodes as soon as they drop. If you like what you hear share this episode with someone and leave us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and our aim is to have as many people as possible hear these voices.

Starting point is 00:44:44 You can also follow us on social media at Matilda Mal at Helena Wadia and follow the show via at MediaStorm pod. Get in touch and let us know what you'd like us to cover or who you'd like us to speak to. Media Storm, an award-winning podcast from the House of the Guilty Feminist, is part of the ACAS creator network. It is produced by Tom Silinski and Deborah Francis White. The music is by Sampire.

Media Storm - S2E9 “Low-skilled”: The exploitation of Eastern European workers - with Alex Bulat

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.