Dr Jon Fox from the Department of Sociology has been awarded a grant of £74,500 from the Economic and Social Research Council for research into the racism faced by Hungarian and Romanian migrant workers in the UK.

In recent years more than three quarters of a million East European migrants have come to the UK, most when their country joined the European Union in 2004 or 2007. Those who stay until the next census in 2011 will probably tick the  'white other' box on the census form but, the research will ask, will being 'white' provide them any protection against the racism that previous immigrants to the UK have faced? The project will compare two understudied groups of migrants: Hungarians (representing the 2004 migrants) and Romanians (representing the 2007 group).

According to Dr Fox, migrants from East Europe face a number of barriers to integration, with migrants from countries that joined in 2007 (including Romania) facing significant legal restrictions as well. Most East European migrants work in low-skilled jobs, despite having above-average educational and professional qualifications. Current UK immigration policy seeks to meet demand for low-skilled labour with new EU migrants, with the result that migrant workers occupy a lower position in the labour market compared to native workers, earn a lower wage (sometimes at or below the minimum wage), have higher rates of unemployment, and have restricted access to benefits.

Through a series of interviews and focus groups with Hungarian and Romanian migrants, the research will look at how these differences are experienced and expressed in terms of racial difference. While much research has been conducted on the relationship between racism and migration, this project will ask what happens when migrant and host supposedly share the same 'race', in this case ‘whiteness’.

The evidence from the UK and beyond suggests that shared 'whiteness' offers few protections against racism. Generations of Irish migrants to the UK and US have been systematically subjected to different forms of racial discrimination. East European Jews a century ago were also treated as racially undesirable by British immigration officials. And more recently East European Roma have been stigmatised (sometimes racially) in West European press coverage and immigration policy. According to Dr Fox, the media and government can play an important role here, in disseminating (and legitimising) racialised understandings of migration.

This research, however, will focus on the personal experiences of the affected migrants and will provide the first insights into the ways in which racism is affecting migrants' experiences of work and life in the UK. The findings will be of interest to policy makers and business leaders concerned with the integration of these migrants in the UK. It will also be relevant to academics challenging prevailing assumptions about the importance of colour to 'race'.

Speaking about the project, Dr Fox said:

'As the recession continues, more attention (most of it negative) is being focused on migrant workers, particularly those from East Europe. Wildcat strikes protesting against the use of foreign workers and slogans of “British jobs for British workers” are becoming more common. But whilst xenophobic undercurrents are increasingly palpable amidst current economic uncertainties, we still know relatively little about how the migrants themselves are coping with this on a day-to-day level. This research hopes to fill this gap with its qualitative approach to the ways in which Hungarian and Romanian migrants use a language of ethnicised and racialised difference to make sense of their changing predicaments.’

The project will run until the end of 2010.