ABSTRACT
A casual reading of the UK press could easily give the impression that East European immigration to the UK started largely after the accession of new EU member states in 2004. However, Bulgarians, together with Romanians, briefly dominated the media in the spring of 2004 when an alleged visa scam emerged. Soon afterwards they were forgotten again only to make a dramatic re-appearance in the summer of 2006 as the two countries’ EU accession approached. The media was flooded with horror stories about HIV positive migrants and criminals arriving from the two countries. At the same time, high powered studies had identified the extensive contribution to the British economy, which immigrants had made after enlargement in 2004 (Ernst and Young 2006; Blanchflower et al. 2007; Gilpin et al. 2006; Iakova 2007) – studies, which implied that an open market policy for the new accession states should be maintained. Nevertheless, the UK government decided to adopt a harder policy stance, and in October 2006 it announced rules which limited Bulgarian and Romanian nationals’ access to the UK labour market once they joined the EU. Furthermore, the British government’s ‘Managed Migration’ strategy also sought to limit immigration from other non-EU states, particularly skilled workers, based on the assumption that nationals from accession states were likely to fill the majority of low-skilled jobs for the foreseeable future (Home Office 2006).
