ABSTRACT
In 2004, when a number of countries joined the EU, Member States were given the option, for a limited period, to stop workers from eight of the new States coming to their countries to work, for a period of up to seven years. The United Kingdom did not do this, but instead introduced a workers registration scheme (WRS) for these new workers. The scale of the resulting migration was considerably larger than the government estimated at the time. The total number of approved applicants 4 under the WRS between May 2004 and June 2008 was 853,850. The highest proportion of approved applications were from Polish nationals (67%), followed by those from Slovakia (10%) and Lithuania (9%). These fi gures do not refl ect the total infl ow of migrant workers and it is likely that the actual total fi gure was much higher, taking into account illegal migration, self-employed migrants and migrants from other countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. These numbers fell signifi cantly from 2008 onwards as a result of diffi cult economic conditions, which resulted in large job losses in areas of the economy in which many of the A8 workers were employed. 5 The outcome is that there is now also a signifi cant white population from outside the UK.
