Picking, packing and plucking: International Migration in the post Brexit world

This fellowship has a macro and a micro level dimension.

At the macro-level I shall look at migration in the broader context of the UK's international obligations under the WTO (GATT and GATS), under the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), and in respect of future trade agreements such as CPTPP. This is just one part of the complex post Brexit landscape which has involved a reshaping of the UK's internal relationships via the UK Internal market Act 2020, the unique position of Northern Ireland, the implications of the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill, and a rebalancing of the relationships between the legislature, executive and the courts, all of which requires legal analysis and input.

At the micro level I wish to examine the immigration/worker protection boundary, in respect of a marginalised community which has long been overlooked. This proposal therefore looks at the impact of labour migration on the East of England. EU migrants largely work in the fields and in food processing factories - doing the three Ps ('Picking, packing and plucking'). Their living and working conditions are poor and they are not well integrated into the local community. Post Brexit, the region has also seen a sharp increase in non-EU farm workers such as those from Ukraine and Kazakhstan, through the UK's new seasonal workers pilot scheme. COVID-19 has highlighted and intensified existing health inequalities, particularly experienced by those facing precarity, namely 'key workers' working in farms and factories in the region.

Working with local migrant advice charities, I want to map the lived experience of these migrant workers over time: their arrival pre-Brexit, their experience with the EU Settlement Scheme, and their life chances post Brexit. We shall be looking (as a case study area) specifically at the situation of EU migrant workers in Great Yarmouth, a declining seaside town with the fifth highest leave vote in the UK and the highest number of EU migrants per capita outside London, including the impact on black EU migrant workers. I also want to track the reactions of the local community to these relative new arrivals and to the investment in the town as a result of the government's levelling up agenda. The proposal therefore contributes to the evolving field of legal geography: understanding the impact of law, especially EU law and now the law of the Withdrawal Agreement, on one particular disadvantaged neighbourhood.

I am also interested in how EU migrants enforce their rights. This project will build on our recent pilot work on what we call 'pragmatic law' (Barnard et al 2022), expanding the evidence base from Great Yarmouth across the Eastern region of England. 'Pragmatic law' looks at street level, pragmatic (legal) problem resolution offered by charitable advice centres, operating in recognised advice deserts (such as the east of England) and working with marginalised migrant communities, especially women (our research to date shows the gendered reality of those accessing this type of free advice). Specifically, I wish to examine the role of early advice in helping people resolve their justiciable issues without needing to interact with more formal dispute resolution pathways such as ADR (alternative dispute resolution) or court pathways.

My work also examines the extent to which individuals are experiencing 'problem clustering' (Genn, 1999) and how traditional legal problem resolution pathways are unsuitable for such intersectional and clustered issues such as debt, employment, immigration and housing problems. Helping individuals to address clustered issues in a holistic way is an under-recognised and under-analysed approach to (legal) problem resolution.