Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Britain Under the Microscope. 欢迎回来【闲话英伦】. Hi, 安澜.

Hi lulu, hi everyone.

安澜, can I propose a topic？

Yeah. Of course.

The other day, some students and I when we were talking about international cities or like cosmopolitan cities, what makes a city truly cosmopolitan, and to me it just feels like it's not so much all the city has many foreigners, but more like when you look at people living in a city, you don't really know who are the foreigners, don't really know who are the locals.

I completely agree. I think if you still look around and say those are foreigners, then it's not really an international city. An international city is a city where people from all across the world will actually make it their home.

Yeah.And London, to some extent, gives me that vibes. So I thought let's talk about immigration,

Very complicated subject.

I know, it's very heavy as well. So maybe let's just start with some light discussions and gradually get into the heavy bits.

I think it's not gonna take too long to get into the heavy side because if you read British newspapers or if you see the news in the UK, there is so much talk about immigration.

And it’s such a controversial topic, very controversial. 很有争议的那种话题.

安澜听过中文里说哪个国家是移民国家这个说法.

Yeah.

So UK has a very long history of immigration, right？

He does. For example, if you look at our Royal Family, our Royal Family originally comes from Germany.

Oh Yes. There are often historical comedies about that fact.

Exactly

They didn't even speak English.

And the thing is that London in particular has always attracted immigrants, and you can see this in lot the port cities as well, like Liverpool. There's always been immigrants. So the idea of someone being like completely British, I never really quite believe that because you have to think that the UK and particularly England is not very far away from Europe, it’s an island, but the distance between France and England is not that far.

Yeah, I think and also you keep hearing things like a second generation, third generation 第二代, 第三代移民, usually by third generation they just completely become local.

Well even by second generation normally, and sometimes even by first generation. So I think it's important to define exactly when immigration increased dramatically and that was after the World War II.

You know you call those waves like immigration waves. So the wave was after the World War II?

After the war, after the bombing and after obviously black soldiers and lots of people died, there was a need for skilled and unskilled labor to rebuild after the war.

And back then, UK had an Empire and they encouraged people from across what was then the Empire to come to the UK and this included probably one of the most famous incidents of immigration in British history and that was the Windrush.

Windrush, was that the name of a ship?

Yeah, the Empire Windrush in 1948 brought Afro-Caribbean migrants to work in the NHS and transport services.

加勒比海那边的,从美洲过来的 to working in NHS. Yeah, it's not that much of a difference now.

Not really no. And eventually you had immigrants come from the Caribbean, you had immigrants come from Africa, you had immigrants come from India.

I would say before the World War II, most of our immigrants came from Europe, particularly places like Germany.

Ok, I'm gonna ask, this is a quite blunt question, those waves of immigrants that you're talking about those were voluntary.

They were, they were voluntary, because you have to think that the wages were higher. There was the push and pull factors as well. So there was that need for labor.

So people were willing to spend a bit more money. But unfortunately when this first started, I wouldn't say they were particularly welcome.

I could kind of imagine but we don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of history, but what 安澜was saying the push and pull factor which is often talked about when you talk about immigration or waves of immigrants, when I was reading about other countries like Canada, I also came across words like push and pull factor.

So at a push and pull factor就说移民有一些是push factor, it's why they would move out of their original country; and the pull factor is why they would be attracted to this new country.

Exactly, and ever since the World War II or after World War II, immigration has increased.

But I bet there were changes in where they come from. I think gradually they're from... there’re immigrants from different regions.

Oh yeah.

First, it was more kind of Afro-Caribbean, then it was Indian and Pakistani, Bangladeshi. And then when Europe expanded, the European Union expanded, we had lots of migrants coming from places like Poland.

Eastern Europe.

Eastern Europe. Romania.

For a period of time, really, I think most of the bartenders or bar workers in London are polish.

Yeah, there was a moment when there were lots and lots of Poles in the UK, but then again there have always been quite a few Poles in the UK because during the World War II, you had polish soldiers who were fighting against the Germans against the Nazis. And Some of them just stayed in the UK.

I think for our audience, because obviously our audience are Chinese, and for me, a Chinese person who's not from a country of immigrants, sometimes it’s difficult, I mean we can understand it in theory, but it's quite difficult to put that into perspective, like you said UK is very close to its European neighbors. Yeah, and it's just like a natural really mixing of different nationality.

You have to think that when I went to school, you were just used to seeing people from all across the world. So friends of mine in my class, their families originally came from India or Pakistan, or they came from Africa. You were just used to seeing people from all across the world, and also you were used to hearing lots of different languages.

Yeah. And I was quite impressed because I once went to a friend's kids... I don't know what you would call it, but like the equivalent of primary school, and they were having these cultural weeks. One week is for example Chinese culture, the next week is like Indian culture or like Middle Eastern culture. They're just very used to sort of exploring different cultures.

Exactly. I remember at my school, we would celebrate Christmas, but we would also celebrate things like Diwali.

Diwali. It’s an Indian, isn't it ?

Hindu festival.

But 安澜 I have to ask an honest question. So being a Londoner if you see someone who does not look Anglo Saxon, before this person even opens his or her mouth, would you assume he or she is not a Londoner？

To be honest, I wouldn't assume that they are a foreigner.

The thing is that I've got friends of mine whose families come from India and Africa the Caribbean, and to be honest, they're more Londoner than I am.

They speak with even more of a British accent than you do.

Exactly.

这点我觉得可能我们很多audience, 就是我们可以去理解, 但是可能我们没有办法感同身受.

This is the difference between growing up in a more multicultural environment and growing up in a more let's say homogeneous environment.

Ok, but what about now? Are you seeing an increase in immigration migration or a decrease？

There has actually been an increase, so there was a record high number in what's known as net migration.

Net migration as in growth in net.

And so net migration is how many people have left the country compared with how many people have migrated to the country. And in 2022 there were 745,000 migrants to the UK.

745,000 compared to your maybe what 60 something million total population?

The total population in the UK is 68 million.

That's quite impressive. That's a large amount, large amount.

But honestly I know so far we've been saying that there are more and more migrants and immigrants, you're also very open minded about the whole thing, but that doesn't mean it's not a controversial issue and also that doesn't mean every British person thinks like you do. right？

No. Immigration was one of the key issues during Brexit and the 2019 election.

脱欧的时候Brexit的时候, one of the biggest debate is the reason why they want to have the Brexit is because they don't want to open the borders.

Oh yeah.The government’s slogan was take back control of the country's borders. So It's actually very embarrassing for the government that migration has increased since Brexit.

所以本来他们投脱欧票的就是希望能把国境线关得更严, 不会让别人从欧盟这边直接进来. But the fact is there are more migrants now, there are more immigrants now.

So at the moment, the UK is predicted to reach 74 million people by 2036 from 68 million now .

Mostly because of immigrants.

Mostly because of immigration.

I see. Is it fair to say because back then when I was reading about Brexit and we were talking about Brexit, a lot of older people voted yes. Would you say in general older people in the UK are more or tend to be more against immigration？

This is the very strange thing. I can't speak for all elderly people or older people. The thing is that what I've noticed and is that older people they tend to look at immigration as like one big issue.

But there are obviously some people who are racist or xenophobic. But I would say my parents would be a good example. They believed that immigration was getting too much, but that didn't stop them being friends with their next door neighbors who came from Syria.

Okay. Let me put us into perspective. It's kind of like they don't mind the people but they are kind of dubious about immigration in theory, as a policy.

Exactly .

I see.