Politicians from a wide variety of political perspectives have invoked “the white working class” in debates about immigration in the last three years, while evidence increasingly shows that many who fit this category are now out-performed on many indices of deprivation and educational attainment by ethnic minorities from migrant backgrounds. But what is the actual evidence for the impact of migration on “white working class” communities? What are the policy implications of the evidence? And how helpful are the terms of the debate in the first place? This briefing will be presented by Dr Ben Rogaly, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Sussex and a member of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. The paperback edition of his book with Becky Taylor, Moving Histories of Class and Community: Identity, Place and Belonging in Contemporary England, is published by Macmillan in March.

Speakers: Dr. Ben Rogaly, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, Sussex University, and Becky Taylor, Birkbeck University of London