ABSTRACT

The expansion of the European Union in May 2004 through the entry of ten countries from central and eastern Europe has generated considerable interest in the British media. While the influx of Polish migrants attracted particular attention, a further twist in media representations about immigration from the ‘new’ European Member States immigrants’ was given by the next stage of EU expansion when Bulgaria and Romania joined in January 2007. Given the history of media suspicion, if not downright hostility towards ‘immigrants’, media stories concerning this expansion have focused on the consequences of this expansion for immigration and the development of Britain’s multicultural diversity. Far less attention has been paid to the other side of the coin – British migration eastwards to these new Member States.