Immigration in the Modern era 1900 - present overview - OCR A1985 to the present

The UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) meant that it signed up to the ‘free movement of workers'. This policy meant that anyone in the EU had the right to move to any member country to work. During the early 2000s when Britain’s economy was booming, hundreds of thousands of people from all over Europe came to work here, mainly in service industries. Although very large numbers of British people also migrated to other EU countries, the number of people coming in became greater than the number leaving.

After the financial crash in 2008, the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which campaigned for the UK to leave the EU and an end to 'mass uncontrolled immigration' grew in popularity. By the 2015 general election and the 2016 referendum on membership of the EU, immigration was a major political issue.

This period saw an acute rise in the number of refugees and displaced people in the world, as a result of regional and civil wars. While many asylum seekers made their way to Britain, increasingly strict asylum and immigration laws made it more and more difficult to live here as an asylum seeker and to achieve refugee status. Wars and instability in the Middle East and many parts of Africa caused the displacement of millions of people, many of whom came to Europe. Some crossed Europe hoping to find a way to enter the UK but ended up living in refugee camps outside Calais.

In the wake of UK involvement in Middle Eastern wars and several terrorist incidents, the early 21st century saw a rise in anti-Semitic incidents and a sharp increase in Islamophobic attacks.

During this same period, Britain became increasingly mixed culturally, not only in its cities but in smaller communities, too. This had a deep cultural and social effect. While most British people were relaxed with cultural diversity, both the nature of British ‘identity’ and the merits of ‘multiculturalism' were hotly debated and continued to divide opinion.