'Employment aids migrant integration'

Leon Walker, Regen.net, 15 July 2008

The research, commissioned by social policy research charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says that employment helps migrants to integrate into communities.

One professionally qualified refugee told researchers from Cardiff University: "Work is people's hobby in the UK. If you can't participate you can never be integrated".

But the report, based on research carried out in South Wales, adds that employment does not guarantee that migrants would be welcomed into communities.

Meanwhile, unemployed new migrants that are black or "visibly different" often believe that they are labelled as "scroungers" by the host population, the report says.

The affluence of an area also determines how easily immigrants will integrate, the study says.

Migration into affluent middle-class areas by white migrants is relatively unproblematic, whereas migration of visibly or linguistically different migrants into deprived working-class communities was often challenging, according to the report.

The report is available here