Thread by @APHClarkson

"They didn't have as much immigration as we did to begin with" and this is where I find how history of European migration in UK debate is portrayed as only starting with CEE FoM in 2004 distorts analysis. Germany had big waves of Eastern European migration from 1989 onwards

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1445869220751937538

The reason Germany and quite a few other West European EU states opted for the 7 year full FoM delay after CEE accession in 2004 was exactly because they had absorbed so much East European migration in the 1990s and early 00s even without Freedom of Movement

The great East European wave of migration including Ukraine, Serbia, Albania and other non-EU states started in the late 1980s before Poland and other CEE states joined the EU. And because of demographic and income trends it started to ebb even as the UK voted to leave the EU

Because polarisation over Brexit in UK politics reduces all discussion of migration to a battle over EU Freedom of Movement, the debate remains solipsistically focused on UK developments rather than the factors that pushed East Europeans to migrate and how/when they started

If you only analyse a migration process from the context of the country of settlement you don't encompass many of the key factors driving migration processes that only make sense if you do as much research on what is happening in countries of origin

The great wave of East European migration to Western Europe began in late 1980s and enveloped Germany and Italy first, then Spain, NL and France before the UK's decision to forego the 7 year FoM delay and its labour market demand drew pre-existing migration flows in its direction

So decisions by the UK and a few other EU states to opened earlier to East European migration after 2004 may have shifted part of its flow, but it did not start a process that for demographic and income reasons in the countries of origin will now ebb whether FoM is ditched or not