Thread by @APHClarkson

The UK desperately needs a destigmatisation of debate over how its economy and state need migration. For years culture wars distracted from a reality that EU and non-EU migration is an inevitable feature of economic growth that fluctuates depending on labour market demand

EU and non-EU migration alone cannot fix labour shortages, but both are an inevitable part of a mix of policy solutions to alleviate the end of the labour market surplus of the 00s. New conditions for which UK business, political and media elites are psychologically unprepared

How UK elites are psychologically unprepared for global shifts from labour surplus to labour shortage that have been apparent in Europe for years is itself a product of endless culture wars that viewed migration as a symbol of identity rather than an embedded structural process

The Right constructed migration as a cultural threat, while among parts of the Left migration has become a symbol of societal cultural progress in ways that have become detached from the economic dynamics that sometimes attract migrants and in other cases mean they go elsewhere

Discourse stagnation embodied by Brexit culture wars mean UK debate is fixated on EU workers. But for years demographic and income data indicated that Eastern European societies are experiencing rising incomes and tightening labour markets. The great EU migration wave is over

The end of the EU migration wave means the UK needs a debate about how it can compete with other European states to attract non-EU skilled migrants or such migrants willing to acquire skills to fill gaps in the labour market that equally necessary training of UK workers can't

And this need to attract migrants to fill labour market gaps that training UK workers can't is not separate from need to improve pay and conditions in entire business sectors that need workers.

Shit pay and conditions will deter migrant as well as UK workers who can go elsewhere

Culture wars in UK political debate have generated a stigma around looking at migration as an inevitable structural aspect of a successful economy that the UK state and economy can no longer afford

ps if for years I've been monotonously repetitive when issues in my research areas of EU neighbourhood borders and migration touch on the UK, it's because UK debate on migration, borders and security has been stuck in a rut of assumptions of 2007 in a very different world of 2021