Migratory Meanderings

The Great British Migration

Remember that newspaper reporter who was doing a newspaper report on Brits leaving (and I blogged about my response to him a few posts ago)? Well his article was printed in the Sunday Times; it paints a pretty accurate picture of the reasons why so many Brits are upping sticks, mostly to countries close by (like Spain and France), but also further afield. And it turns out our reasons for leaving, as bitter as they might seem to some, aren’t that uncommon.

October 24, 2004
Slamming the door on Britain

Crime. High taxes. The threat of terrorism. Endless rain. Is it any wonder that people are leaving the UK in droves? Report by Oliver Bennett

At 6.50am Ryanair flight 072 from Stansted airport to Carcassonne, southwest France, is full of exceptionally cheerful people. Most are in their fifties, although there are a few younger families with infants. The men wear Rohan trousers and trekking shoes; the women are in fleeces and sandals. To my left, a literary agent reads a manuscript. They look well heeled, informal and happy: some off to gite holidays, some to second homes, others to first homes. For the UK is seeing a massive exodus from its shores, and Ryanair’s passengers are among those fleeing their native country.

There is no doubt that the British are leaving en masse: they are heading not just to France but to points further afield. To listen to their stories and read the figures, the conclusion could well be that the country — or at least the south of England — is at full stretch. Undeniably, there’s a squeeze.

• The UK population is expected to increase to around 65m by 2025: up from the 59.6m recorded in 2003.

The number of incomers is fairly well documented. Less well known is
the number of people leaving the country. What began as a cosmopolitan
trickle in the 1980s to British expatriate zones such as Tuscany and the Dordogne has become a flood of Britons, often middle class, over 50, and peevish about the old country. “The fact is that people are being crowded out of southeast England,” says Professor Tim Hatton, an immigration specialist at the University of Essex, who published a paper for the Royal Economic Society about the phenomenon. “Our best estimate is that for every 100 in, there’s 30 to 50 out.”

Think-tanks, estate agents, sociologists and a growing emigration industry are starting to chronicle this departure. The polls show wishful thinking as well as actual movement. ICM and YouGov have both found that over half of a large sample would, in principle, move out of the country. Surveys by the Centre for Future Studies and the Alliance & Leicester International bank show that a third of British people are actively considering a move abroad, with the bank
projecting that 6m of us — over a million families — will be gone by 2020. Myriad “reality TV” programmes chronicle the tribulations of foreign relocation, as do innumerable books about restoring olive farms. They all send the same message: a better way of life lies abroad.

The full article is way too long to replicate here but you can read it at the Times Online anyway. Or, if you’d like me to send it to you by email, just drop me a line and I’d be glad to post it to you.