{"id":524,"date":"2009-07-01T14:42:30","date_gmt":"2009-07-01T14:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=524"},"modified":"2013-03-14T10:33:35","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T10:33:35","slug":"hard-times-2009-part-6-escaping-the-recession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=524","title":{"rendered":"No hiding place: the futile attempt to run away from the recession – Hard Times, Part 6"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1854 Charles Dickens published his novel \u2018Hard Times\u2019. It held up a mirror to the social and economic concerns of its age. What would Dickens have discovered if had attempted to do the same today when, after a period of careless prosperity, the nation has once again fallen upon hard times? In a six-part series, Paul Vallely revisits some of Dickens\u2019s themes \u2013 work, education, poverty, escapism, emotional health and migration. This week, he meets the<\/strong> expats who dreamed of a better life in New Zealand, Spain and France, while Poles flocked to the UK for work. Then the downturn hit and the migrants are heading home<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cYou must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose I must. I can\u2019t be more miserable anywhere,\u201d whimpered the whelp, \u201cthan I have been here, ever since I can remember. That\u2019s one thing.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

from Hard Times, by Charles Dickens <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It had been a long day. But the journey home was what finished Sarah Bradford. The traffic was so bad it took her 20 minutes to drive just one mile to her home in the centre of Liverpool from the comprehensive where she taught English and RE. At 32 she had been almost a decade in the job. She entered the small three-bedroomed house she shared with her husband Dave. \u201cThat\u2019s it,\u201d she expostulated. \u201cI think we should move.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFine, where to?\u201d replied Dave, who is a design engineer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy don\u2019t we emigrate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFine, whether to? New Zealand?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeh\u201d.<\/p>\n

And that was it. The decision was made. One year on they have just been granted a \u201cskilled permanent visa\u201d to emigrate.<\/p>\n

There was more to it than just the traffic, of course. As there was for Sue Williams, a nurse and mother of two, in her forties, from Rugby who also began the lengthy emigration process on impulse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re rugby fans,\u201d she says. \u201cWe go to all the internationals at Twickenham and Cardiff and we fancied going somewhere else too. So I was on the internet looking at the Rugby World Cup there in 2011 when a box popped up which asked: Have you thought about living and working in New Zealand?\u2019\u201d She hadn\u2019t, but she began to, and discovered that nurses are one of the occupations the country welcomed. Twelve months on she has just lodged an emigration application.<\/p>\n

With the clouds of recession dark overhead the thoughts of many Britons are turning to the idea of a better life elsewhere. The dream is of a better work-life balance, a lower cost of living, more affordable property prices, a gentler pace of life, a better climate and wide open spaces.<\/p>\n

Last year Australia was, yet again, the top destination for emigrating Brits. Some 23,000 made the move. Next came the United States, with 14,500; then New Zealand with 10,500 and Canada with 8,000. Some 70 per cent moved \u201cfor a better lifestyle\u201d, according to a survey by Emigrate magazine, while 18 per cent wanted to be somewhere they feel is safer for their children. The number of Britons heading Down Under has doubled in the past ten years.<\/p>\n

There are always both pull and push factors involved in the decisions of those who emigrate. Sue\u2019s husband, Tony, an IT manager, sums up the attractions. \u201cIt will be a less pressured place, with better weather, lower crime rates and more time to do family things and outdoor activities. We\u2019re a sporty family. We dive, row, run, swim, dance. The outdoor life is a big pull factor.\u201d<\/p>\n

So it is for Sarah\u2019s husband, Dave. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to be any better off financially but it will be great to be somewhere where the outdoor life is more accessible. Here if we want to go walking or climbing or sailing we have to get up at 6am on a Saturday and rive to North Wales or the Lakes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the push factors are decisive too, and it is these that recession exacerbates. \u201cThe current situation in the UK is a big factor,\u201d says Tony Williams. \u201cI am under huge pressure to keep 100 employees in work. It\u2019s very stressful. For Sue disillusion with the NHS is a big factor. She\u2019s worked there 26 years, is a qualified nurse prescriber and is halfway through a Masters degree but she is deeply undervalued. Then we look at the state of the employment and housing market and think how are our two boys, who are 18 and 13, going to find a job or ever afford anywhere to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the teacher, Sarah Bradford, the push factors are contemporary British values. \u201cI don\u2019t like the endless commercialisation of life here. I don\u2019t like the WAG culture of conspicuous consumption. And there\u2019s less of all that there.\u201d For her husband Dave, the engineer, our perverted values are most in evidence in the workplace. \u201cIn my office you have to be seen to do 16 hours a day,\u201d he complains. \u201cLife is work, work, work, come home, have something to eat, do more work, go to bed knackered. I have worked in New Zealand for ten months on and off over the years. The people there are not lazy. They work hard but they keep it in perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Small wonder that they have all decided to take the advice of Jim Rogers \u2013 the man who, with George Soros, made billions betting against sterling when it was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday in 1992. Rogers earlier this year announced that Britannia, which once proudly ruled the waves, is now rapidly sinking beneath them. Sell the \u00a3, he counselled, and leave the country.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Emigration goes up in recessions, usually. The most recent peaks in net emigration \u2013 when more people left the country than entered it \u2013 were in 1974, 1981 and 1992, says Danny Dorling, professor of human geography at the University of Sheffield, who recently made a study of the subject. Recessions affected all countries, but even so the overall flow of migration was out of Britain.<\/p>\n

And yet, despite the example of Sarah Bradford and Sue Williams, it seems not to be happening this time. Why is this?<\/p>\n

It is true that more people are talking about it. The Opportunity New Zealand Expo exhibition at the National Exhibition Centre in March sold 25 per cent more advanced tickets sales than in previous years. In normal times inquiries translate into action in about 5 per cent of individuals, says Andy Harwood, who runs visabureau.com, the UK\u2019s biggest emigration agency which handles applications on behalf of the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and US governments.<\/p>\n

And, where they feel unconstrained by circumstances, they act. Applications to the charity Voluntary Service Overseas have more than doubled since last October and the nature of the inquiries reflects the private sector\/public sector pattern of the recession. \u201cApplicants from a business and financial background are up,\u201d says VSO\u2019s Catherine Raynor. \u201cBut we\u2019re still struggling to find the number of teachers we need.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the numbers of people actually emigrating are down. Andy Harwood thinks he knows why. \u201cIn the past,\u201d he says, \u201cthe way people thought was: I can sell my house in the UK, pay off the mortgage, and buy a house outright in New Zealand and have a lot of money to spare.\u201d But that was when the currencies of popular British destinations like Australia, New Zealand and Canada were traditionally weaker than the pound.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fall in the exchange rate has changed that,\u201d he says at his office in Fulham in London. \u201c Now people going out will probably have the same level of mortgage debt in New Zealand as they have here. Also people can\u2019t sell their houses \u2013 or feel they have lost money on them and want to hang on until the price will goes back up. And people who have a job in the current climate want to hang on to it. Usually people feel more positive in the spring and summer, and inquiries go up, but they aren\u2019t convinced they\u2019ve seen the bottom yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world sees two kinds of migrants \u2013 those who leave home to earn more money and those who are in search of a different kind of life. \u201cBrits going to Australia, New Zealand and Canada are looking for a better lifestyle not to make their fortune,\u201d says Harwood. They are fed up of leaving home at 6am and getting back at 9pm and seeing more of the M25 than they do of their kids. For some the recession then becomes a spur. A few are even helped by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very complicated business,\u201d says Sarah Bradford. \u201cThere is a really detailed check on what you say in your application. You have to have a medical. There are criminal record and police checks. You even have to contact your old universities to get them to certify the content of the modules that you did. It all costs money and it all takes time, which is why it is worth paying a broker like Visabureau to do it.\u201d She spent around \u00a33,500 on the process before her visa came through. \u201cYou don\u2019t just do this on a whim; it\u2019s a real commitment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, after all that, she initially got a call to say that the 115 points her background earned her under the official application system was probably not going to be enough. The current threshold was 130. \u201cThere were tears,\u201d she admits. \u201cI\u2019ve got a degree in Politics and English and an MA in Theology and that still wasn\u2019t enough\u201d. She began thinking about doing an Open University course to get the extra credits.<\/p>\n

But fluctuations in the jobs market in New Zealand, along with the number of people applying to enter the country, changed things. A few weeks later she got a call to say that she and Dave had been accepted. \u201cThe recession had helped us. Because fewer people were applying the threshold had dropped to 115!\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even the poorer financial picture at present does not put off the really dedicated. The Williams family, who are older \u2013 Sue is 44 and Tony 50 \u2013 have other things in their sights. \u201cI\u2019ll probably earn slightly less but the cost of living is lower so we\u2019ll be slightly better off,\u201d says Sue. \u201cWe should get \u00a3280,000 for our 3 bed house here in Rugby and we should get a three or four bed one for \u00a3200,000 in New Zealand. But it is the better prospects for our sons, and the gentler pace of life, we are going for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their attitude is healthy. \u201cOne of the things we have to warn people about,\u201d says Andy Harwood of Visabureau.com, is that they\u2019ll often have to start again at the bottom of the ladder. They won\u2019t get paid as much initially. A nurse or electrician will have to re-register and may have to pass exams which will take time and work on a lower wage till that happens. It\u2019s important that people don\u2019t go with false expectations about the work they\u2019ll get, or their position or status.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tony Williams is sanguine about all that. \u201cWith the pressure of my job here,\u201d he says, \u201ca few steps back down the career ladder is itself quite attractive in its way.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It was not the search for a cushier life that brought the great influx of Polish migrants to Britain over the past decade, in the final years of the boom before the great banking crash. It was the search for money.<\/p>\n

The Poland they left had unemployment of 16 per cent, more than treble that of the UK at the time. And the exchange rate was such that every pound they sent home would buy four loaves of bread. Polish workers came to Britain in such numbers \u2013 an estimated 450,000 \u2013 that supermarkets opened Polish sections, the M6 had road signs in Polish and even that most xenophobic of British newspapers, The Sun, launched a Polish edition, though with somewhat less racy content.<\/p>\n

But all that has changed. The fall in the exchange rate between sterling and the zloty is so great that a pound sent back to Poland now only buys a single loaf of bread. Polish plumbers and builders, like Jarek Djano, who over the past seven years has been much in demand by the residents of middle-class Twickenham, could once make a good living working a five-day week; now they are now having to work six or seven days.<\/p>\n

Many of them have decided to go home. The number of migrants returning to the Eastern European part of the EU has doubled. Things have changed in Poland. The credit crunch has not had the same impact there because Polish banks did not lend to recklessly. (Half of all Europe\u2019s entire credit card debt is owed by the British.) Poland is enjoying a construction boom as the country prepares to host the Euro 2012 football championships. It is spending billions of EU grants on stadiums, roads, rails and airports and tourist facilities. Builders are going back \u2013 building company profits are up two-thirds \u2013 and so are many hotel and catering staff .<\/p>\n

Unemployment is down from 16 per cent to six per cent \u2013 two points lower than in Britain. Salaries in Poland have risen by up to 15 per cent in the last year. Companies in Poland are contacting Poles in the UK with offers of well-paid jobs. Local authorities in Poland are holding recruiting fairs in Britain to entice Poles home. Even the Polish army is sending a roadshow to London because it wants English-speaking recruits.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Poland the situation is much better and I can earn three times more than I could two years ago,\u201d Ryszard Multan, 26, told a London newspaper two months ago, taking a break from his double shift in a Paddington restaurant. \u201cThat, combined with the exchange rate means it\u2019s not worth staying.\u201d He has now gone.<\/p>\n

For some the journey to Britain is still attractive. Salaries are higher, even if they buy less if the money is sent back to Poland. New entrants were down 53,000 in the last three months for which there are official figures but 44,000 still came. But middle class Poles know that, though their salary back home may be 10-20 per cent less than their London wage, the lower cost of living will allow them to live in a flat four times bigger.<\/p>\n

Even blue collar workers are returning to Poland in large numbers. Mirek Szubzda, 40, was a fork-lift truck driver in Harrow earning \u00a3625 a month, quadruple his pay in Poland. But he spent two years sharing a four-bedroom flat with six other Poles. When the recession started to bite in Britain just over a year ago he decided it was time to go home. Now working in a steel company to the north of Warsaw he is earning less but is much happier to be back with his wife and daughter. \u201cMoney,\u201d he says, \u201ccannot buy you everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In Dubai the police have towed away 3000 abandoned cars in recent months, many of them from the airport carpark. They have been left there by expats who have been made redundant as recession has bit fiercely on one of the world\u2019s richest states. With no prospect of finding another job in the Emirates despairing employees are walking away from their homes in the city, driving to the airport and abandoning their cars with keys in the ignition. The Poles are not the only people who are going home.<\/p>\n

Builders are still at work on the Burj Dubai, which will be the world\u2019s largest building when it is completed later this year. But work on virtually every other major building project has come to a standstill in the city which over the past decade had become one of the world\u2019s leading financial centres. Cranes and lifting gear stand motionless across the city. The expensive new publicly-financed metro system is still under construction but the traffic jams it was designed to relieve have all but evaporated, even during the early-morning rush hour which once brought traffic to a standstill. Taxi drivers are making a quarter of what they used to earn and the price of luxury cars has fallen 40 per cent in the city\u2019s glitzy showrooms.<\/p>\n

Everywhere foreign workers \u2013 from top bankers, estate agents, aviation employees as well as many of the million Indian labourers in the United Arab Emirates of which Dubai is the main city \u2013 are losing their jobs. And under UAE visa regulations they are all forced to leave the country within three months if they are made redundant and cannot find another job, which is nigh-on impossible with the almost total shutdown of the finance and construction industries.<\/p>\n

The Dubai dream has come to an abrupt awakening. Before the bank crash many expats enjoyed the kind of life they could only have imagined back home. It was a life in the sun, with tax-free salaries, attractive relocation packages, a cosmopolitan lifestyle, good schools and smart restaurants and hotels. Here secretaries from London could find themselves editing magazines and shopworkers from Mumbai ran real estate companies. It was a place where profit and work-life balance were not incompatible.<\/p>\n

How it soured. Today most Dubai hotels are 60 per cent empty. Its business community is racked with stories of how leading companies are not paying their suppliers, with even small invoices for a few hundred pound going unpaid for months. Firms are slashing their employees salaries by 30 per cent and then making them sign \u201cnon disclosure\u201d agreements to keep the fact from becoming public. Rents have been slashed by 25 per cent over a single month as many properties are just unable to sell.<\/p>\n

One of the cars left in Dubai\u2019s airport car park belonged to a New Zealander, Nicholas Down, 43, who only started work at a Dubai real estate company last year. The first villa he sold was in the city\u2019s luxurious Palms development. The buyer paid 60 million dirhams (then worth \u00a315 million) in cash. It took, Down says, three whole days to count.<\/p>\n

But then the business all dried up. His bosses brought in Russian estate agents, who tried to entice potential buyers using prostitutes. When Down objected he was given a month\u2019s notice. He, his wife and two children emptied their Dubai apartment and drove to the airport and got the plane home. At least he, when he got back to New Zealand, posted the car keys back to his employer.<\/p>\n

Back in his home town of Hamilton on north island Nicholas Down went on unemployment benefit until he was able to find work. That is a phenomenon which is worrying the New Zealand government. And the same thing is happening in Australia where returning workers are up by almost a third as Aussie expats lose their high-paying jobs abroad and return home in search of firms which have weathered the global economic downturn better. Many have, and provide jobs. But rising numbers were being forced to join the employment queue.<\/p>\n

All this will cause additional problems for Britons seeking to emigrate. So will the pressure the returnees are putting on the housing market, keeping prices firm.<\/p>\n

New Zealand, like Australia, in a normal year sees huge numbers of its own young population head off each year to travel the world. \u201cThe Kiwi dream was: university in New Zealand, make your fortune in London, and then come home to an early retirement,\u201d says the migration expert Professor Dorling. \u201cNew Zealand is six months ahead in its academic year which begins in February and it has seen a massive increase in numbers staying on at school or university. Others have flown to London for their gap year, found there are no jobs, and flown home again because Mum and Dad can\u2019t fund their credit card for a year.\u201d The number deciding to defer their travel is large, the country\u2019s social development minister, Paula Bennett, said last month.<\/p>\n

All this limits the space for potential immigrants from the UK and elsewhere. And competition for that space is increasing. For the first time in a generation, the citizens of Ireland are actively looking at living and working overseas. After 15 years of migrants returning to the Irish Republic the number of those leaving Ireland has, over the past 12 months, doubled compared with five years ago. The options for Britons looking for a better life elsewhere are narrowing.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Julian Urrutia is standing in the doorway of his shop in the little village of Eymet in rural France having a cigarette. Despite his Basque surname he is an Englishman and therefore not temperamentally disposed to flouting the rules about not smoking inside the premises. He is smoking a Marlboro Lite.<\/p>\n

Eymet is a Bastide market town in the heart of the Dordogne. But it is also a little bit of England. A quarter of the population of Eymet \u2013 some 200 families \u2013 is British. The town has a cricket team, an English pub and once even had a fish and chip van. L\u2019Epicerie Anglaise there sells HobNobs, Heinz Beans, Kellogg\u2019s Cornflakes and a range of Twinings Teas.<\/p>\n

It is an ambiguous phenomenon. The downside for the French is the feel of colonisation. The upside is that, as Julain Urrutia puts it, \u201cthe Brits have brought literally billions of pounds into this area, buying property, refurbishing and revitalising it\u201d. Around 17 per cent of all the Britons who move to France for good, not to mention those with holiday homes, buy houses in the Dordogne region.<\/p>\n

But the global economic downturn is ruining the expat lifestyle. Those on fixed incomes \u2013 such as pensions or interest from savings held in British banks \u2013 have seen their spending power reduced by a third in less than a year because of the fall in the value of the pound against the euro. Those relying on dividends from stocks and shares are even worse off. Those who commute to work in the UK each week or month have seen their costs rise and their income fall. The exchange rate which has sent so many Poles home is now threatening to do the same to the British.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverywhere you see people economising,\u201d says Julian Urrutia. \u201cThey are turning their gardens into vegetable patches, not eating out, not having ice-cream or coffee at the end of a meal, not doing up their house or garden.\u201d Those with local businesses, or who depend on renting out g\u00eetes to tourists, are badly hit. \u201cSo are those French businesses which relied on Brits for a large percentage of their business. A year ago flights to Bergerac from UK were full but they are half-empty now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The locals are slashing their prices to win back business. But a reduction from \u20ac900 to \u20ac600 for a week\u2019s rent in high season isn\u2019t much of an inducement to holidaymakers paying in sterling; it just reduces the cost to what it was last year, before the pound fell in value. And everything else in France is still a third dearer to the tourist.<\/p>\n

There are similar reductions, and more, in house prices. But the British buyers who previously drove prices up, have all but vanished. \u201cYou can buy a \u20ac400,000 house for half that price now,\u201d says Deborah Brett, a director of Anglo-French Removals of Ashford in Kent. \u201cPrices have halved all over France.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even so some British expats are being forced to sell at those reduced prices and move back to the UK. \u201cA year ago our lorries were full going out to France with the occasional part-load coming back,\u201d says Brett. \u201cBut for the past 12 months it has been almost entirely a one-way traffic with hardly anyone moving out to France.\u201d Work almost completely dried up from October to the end of January. \u201cIt was a real struggle for those months. We\u2019ve been sending out lorries completely empty to bring someone back\u201d. The firm is bringing back around four families a week.<\/p>\n

The fall in the pound \u2013 which dropped to a low of 97p for \u20ac1 at the end of last year \u2013 is only one factor. Another was President Sarkozy\u2019s decision to change the law so that people couldn\u2019t get medical cover if they hadn\u2019t lived in France for five years. \u201cMost of those returning are people who retired early and now find they just can\u2019t live on their pensions. Some have sold up. Others are trying to rent out their homes, because no-one will buy them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julian Urrutia almost gave up himself. He originally went out to France as a tree surgeon but two years ago opened a business in Eymet selling stone for flooring and patios. \u201cThe last six months of last year was shocking beyond belief,\u201d he recalls. \u201cSo when I went back to the UK for a wedding and someone offered me a job I was tempted. But when I looked into it, with the amount it would cost to rent in Weybridge, I\u2019d have had to be earning \u00a360-70,000 to make it worthwhile. So I decided to hang on, and it was the right decision because business has picked up, perhaps just because it took two years for people to clock that I was here.\u201d<\/p>\n

In any case, the things that brought him to Eymet remain attractive. \u201cIt\u2019s safe here for kids. And you know they\u2019re not being stuffed full of the wrong values like they are in the UK. The houses are four or five times bigger than in Britain and they typically come with a hectare of garden. There are no traffic jams or speed cameras. Crime is low. People don\u2019t live on debt; people only buy what they can afford and pay off their credit cards every month. There\u2019s no status with cars, everybody drives the same three kinds. Unlike that…\u201d<\/p>\n

He pauses as a spotless Jaguar XJ purrs past his shopfront. It has English plates, but the suits hanging neatly in the back are as much of an identifier of its owner\u2019s nationality.<\/p>\n

Julian Urrutia is not the only one to be mildly more optimistic. \u201cIn the past few weeks business has begun to pick up again,\u201d says Deborah Brett as Anglo-French Removals. \u201cWe\u2019ve had quite a few phone calls from people wanting to move to France who have sold or rented their house in the UK and want to put their furniture in store and then go to France to hunt for a bargain. Our lorries are now fully booked for the whole of July. I think we might be through the worst now and things are getting better.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

They are not so sure about that in Spain. The Costa del Sol and its environs has been for a decade the favourite destination of Britons wanting to retire abroad. Around 380,000 Brits are registered with the Spanish authorities but the Foreign Office reckons there are double or treble that number there.<\/p>\n

Many of them melt into the Spanish community in the picturesque villages in the hills that rise from the coast. Others can be found in expat havens like the British Society in Benalmadena, about half an hour\u2019s drive down the coast from Malaga, where they can enjoy a Mama Mia Night with other Brits for \u20ac14, take part in a Classic Car Meet with Luxury BBQ for \u20ac15 or meet up for the regular Sunday Carvery Lunch. If they can afford it.<\/p>\n

For economising is the menu al dia here too. \u201cPeople are eating out a lot less,\u201d says Barry Jenkins, 64, the society\u2019s president. \u201cThey are shopping at Lidl and Aldi. They are putting spending on their house and garden.\u201d They have been hit by the same double whammy as the Britons in Dordogne: low interest rates have wiped out their monthly income and the fall in the exchange rate has made things even worse. \u201cPeople who were on pensions of \u20ac600 a year ago are living on just \u20ac400 a month now. And they don\u2019t know exactly how much they will be getting from month to month, until the money drops into their account at whatever the exchange rate is that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some are throwing in the beach towel and retuning to the UK. \u201cOver the last 12 months the vast majority of inquiries have been for people moving back,\u201d says Julie Fitzgerald of the removal firm Ramsey Douglas which has operated between UK and Spain for 20 years. \u201cSome of them were from people we\u2019d moved out to Spain only within the last 12 months. Things are very tough here. The numbers going back have at least doubled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most are hunkering down and holding on to what brought them in the first place. \u201cI was standing one day at the French windows of my home in Burnley looking at the rain and wind sweeping across the moors and thinking: \u2018What are we doing here?\u2019\u201d says Barry Jenkins, who now can see Africa from his bedroom window. \u201cI\u2019d rather be less well off in the sunshine than in the rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

But others disagree. \u201cThe sun is nice but it doesn\u2019t pay your bills, that\u2019s the bottom line,\u201d says Richard Shears, who works in the devastated real estate sector on the Costa del Sol. After seven years in Spain he and his wife are now planning to return to London . The area once had one of Europe\u2019s most flourishing property markets. It is desperately flat now, as is the region\u2019s once booming construction industry. No new homes have been built for six months by any major developer.<\/p>\n

Tourists are down, officially, by 16.3 per cent year on year, but many locals know it is far worse than that. Major hotels stood in ghostly silence for the first part of this year. Bars and restaurants are empty even though some of them are doing two meals for the price of one.<\/p>\n

Those whose incomes have been ravaged have no way of making up the difference. \u201cThere is just no work to be had,\u201d says Brian Mallinson, who left his self-employed work as a contract carpet cleaner in Harrogate last year to move to the hilltown of C\u00f3mpeta where he and his wife had two years earlier enjoyed a holiday idyll. \u201cThe area is full of English builders, plumbers, brickies, pool cleaners all desperate to find anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there is no work. Unemployment in Spain is 17 per cent \u2013 more than double the European average. Thanks to the collapse of he building industry that part of Andaluc\u00eda accounts for almost 25 per cent of Spain\u2019s four million people without a job.<\/p>\n

Those unable to speak good Spanish, like many of the expats Brit, have even less chance of finding work. Which is why the British Embassy in Spain has posted on its website advice for those who want to return to Britain, many of whom need to re-apply for status as a UK resident. Many of them also need catch-up advice about everything from satellite television to supermarket cashback and where all the NHS dentists have gone.<\/p>\n

Some of those who return are agreeably surprised. \u201cThe price of food is much better in the UK,\u201d says pensioner Teresa White back in Devon after 12 years with her husband John, a retired policeman, in Frigiliana, the prettiest village in Andaluc\u00eda according to the Spanish tourist authority. The pueblo blanco may sit high on a mountain ridge overlooking the sea with spectacular panoramic views but, Mrs White says: \u201cThere is much more choice in the shops in the UK. People are friendlier. I\u2019m more comfortable here.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Migration is not a subject which makes many people comfortable. Immigration is particularly controversial. It is, after all, what others do to us, whereas emigration is merely what we do to others.<\/p>\n

All the statistics show that recession reduces immigration. \u201cThe most recent Department of Work and Pensions figures suggest immigration rates have declined since the onset of recession,\u201d says the migration academic, Danny Dorling. But with immigration facts do not always matter. It provokes so many atavistic fears about the Other that perception becomes its own political reality.<\/p>\n

Britain\u2019s departing Poles speak with feeling about our nation\u2019s growing resentment against foreign workers as the recession, and the anxiety of what it may yet bring, grips the national psyche. Wildcat strikes have pressurised employers to replace Polish workers with local men at a liquid gas site in Milford Haven and elsewhere. The victory of the far-right British National Party in the European elections is more evidence, as is the hounding of 100 Romanians from their homes in Northern Ireland in recent weeks.<\/p>\n

Racism is on the rise in France, too, with the English there on the receiving end. \u201cIll-feeling towards the British, which wasn\u2019t there before, is creeping in,\u201d says Julian Urrutia in the Dordogne. \u201cHere it\u2019s always been French First; if an Englishman and a Frenchman are up for the same work you know who\u2019ll get it.\u201d But Urrutia, whose French is fluent, sees something more overt now. \u201cIt\u2019s just the odd snide remark, in the market, or the hospital or a lot of mumbling about the English or road rage directed against a lorry I\u2019ve just imported which still has English plates. It didn\u2019t used to happen. But local people are feeling squeezed because of the recession.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mood has just got a lot worse in Spain in Brian Mallinson\u2019s village of C\u00f3mpeta where a 49-year-old British roofer named Stephen Mallon, who has had a holiday home there for six years, was last month killed by falling, or being thrown, from a 15 feet high terrace in a bar-room brawl between English and Spaniards. The fight began when the dead man\u2019s son began chatting up a local girl but the attack on Mr Mallon as he left the bar was by a 30-strong group armed with coshes, planks of wood and broken bottles and was said to have been rooted in anti-British feeling among some locals angry at the number of expat houses in the village.<\/p>\n

Yet even setting aside such extreme responses, it is clear that across the world the recession is feeding a range of xenophobic reactions. \u201cAs unemployment rises governments will feel more pressure from unions, some politicians and others not to admit so many immigrants,\u201d says Andy Harwood of Visabureau.com. \u201cThe Australian government has in recent weeks cut the numbers it is to admit.\u201d It had already reduced the number of its desired professions from 82 to 52.<\/p>\n

Looked at objectively immigration is less of an issue than we all believe, insists Professor Danny Dorling who recently reviewed migration statistics taking a longer view based on what happens in sets of individuals\u2019 lifetime rather than on year-to-year shifts. \u201cWhat you find is that big fluctuations tend to cancel each other out over time,\u201d he says. \u201cThe key determinant is the birthrate. If it is low in a particular generation or cohort then migrants who come will tend to stay. But when the birthrate is high they tend to move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

There may be some wild cards this time. The decline of the financial sector in the UK could well mean that the overall population falls, though the immigrants who go will tend to be those the British do not regard as immigrants, the Americans and Western Europeans. And it is not yet clear what impact the rise and rise of English as the dominant world language might have. \u201cBut the overall lesson is that it is not worth worrying too much,\u201d says Dorling. \u201cOver the past 150 years birth rates, immigration and emigration have pretty much balanced themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may be the lesson, but do not expect anyone in the febrile world of modern politics to learn it.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In the end what people are buying, when they uproot themselves to seek a better life elsewhere, is a dream. Sometimes, sadly, dreams become nightmares, which is what happened for Brian and Debbie Mallinson. \u201cWe had fallen in love with C\u00f3mpeta on holiday and decide to move there,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt took us two years to get it organised. We sold our house in Harrogate and put the money in a high interest account having decided we\u2019d rent for a year till we got established.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went out with a couple of phone numbers of people who ran similar businesses to mine, and who had too much work on. But when we got to Spain and rang them one had returned to the UK for lack of work and the other didn\u2019t have enough work to keep themselves going. We should have done more homework and set something definite up before we arrived,\u201d he concludes as he takes a break from cleaning a hotel carpet back at his old business in Harrogate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe moved at the worst possible time,\u201d adds Debbie. \u201cThe local economy just collapsed. Half the village were out of work. And the cost of living was astronomical. The only things that are really cheap there are cigs and booze but you can\u2019t live on them. We were living off our savings. We got through about \u00a320,000 before we decided to come back.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crunch came for no apparent reason. Brian just woke up early one morning and looked out from his balcony. \u201cI just looked at this fantastic view and thought: \u2018This isn\u2019t going to work. It\u2019s ridiculous.\u2019\u201d So they came home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had been lovely to be there,\u201d says Debbie wistfully. \u201cWe went out so excited and full of hope but it was a disaster. We didn\u2019t foresee the recession. But for that it would have worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sue and Tony Williams are convinced that it still will work for them. \u201cWe\u2019d be very disappointed now if they turned us down,\u201d says the nurse from Rugby. \u201cWe\u2019ve invested a lot of time and emotional energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it wouldn\u2019t be the end of the world,\u201d adds her husband carefully. \u201cWe\u2019d have a chat about it as a family. We\u2019re very much glass-half-full people. If we hadn\u2019t been we wouldn\u2019t have gone for it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t like it? We haven\u2019t really thought about that. We can always come back. At least we\u2019d have had the opportunity to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Men in exile feed on dreams of hope, Aeschylus famously said. But so, it seems, do the rest of us. Recession just makes both dreams and hope more necessary.<\/p>\n

\n

.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1854 Charles Dickens published his novel \u2018Hard Times\u2019. It held up a mirror to the social and economic concerns of its age. What would Dickens have discovered if had attempted to do the same today when, after a period of careless prosperity, the nation has once again fallen upon hard times? In a six-part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,26,20,37,38],"tags":[151,78,79],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-browns-britain","category-hard-times","category-immigration","category-politics","category-society","tag-emigration","tag-jobs","tag-recession"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7637,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/7637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}