The suddenness of the economic downturn has taken many by surprise, and is throwing up all sorts of challenges to inherited thinking from the years of the boom decade in Ireland, particularly in regard to immigration.
Initially there seemed to be a public antipathy to migrants – mainly, it appears, driven by a public perception that too many people were abusing our asylum system. Anti-immigrant feelings were initially fuelled by this perception that the then large numbers of asylum seekers were in effect economic migrants rather than genuine cases of people fleeing persecution or turmoil in their home countries.
The State – under the direction of two justice ministers, John O’Donoghue and Michael McDowell – led a drive to get the numbers down, and in fact they halved to their present level of around 5,000 or so a year.
However, these early feelings of antipathy among the public were also dissipated by the accession of the eastern and Baltic countries to the EU, and the large numbers of their people who have come here since 2004. The reality began to dawn that migration was a necessary part of a booming economy and that services of every kind had to be maintained.
There was and is a feeling that certain kind of jobs, typically in the hotel and catering sector, were no longer attractive to Irish people. This is borne out very forcefully by statistics this year which showed 90 per cent of all new jobs going to immigrants. These numbers came hand-inhand with news of a jump in the number of migrants signing on the dole.
These are signs that immigration, rather than being on the wane, is now going into a more ‘mature’ cycle, whereby those with children are settling down and enrolling their young ones in schools, while those without attachments go to seek work elsewhere in Europe when, as in construction, the work dries up.
There is even some anecdotal evidence from employers that they are in fact laying off people with a preference for immigrants as opposed to Irish staff members. It seems a perception exists among some employers that non- Irish workers are harder workers. One of the big challenges in the years ahead, amid a tightening labour market, will be the increased competition between both Irish and non-Irish people seeking scarce work in the jobs market. Already there is evidence that Irish workers are dropping their sights and beginning to go for jobs that they might not have entertained a year or two back. The best example of this comes from last weekend’s Sunday Times, which reported that the likes of McDonald’s and Aldi are seeing a big increase in the number of Irish people applying for positions.
The tightening economy is also seeing distinct changes in the perceptions by middle class people of discount supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi. I remember someone telling me a few years ago that they wouldn’t be caught dead shopping in either of the two low-cost German-owned stores, with the additional barb that only immigrants shopped there. Now. virtually no middle class dinner party is complete without some ritual reference to the value that is to be obtained in these stores.
There is little doubt that harder economic times will fuel an element of additional racist sentiment. It would be a surprise if it didn’t, but there is still a strong possibility that Ireland will not dumbly follow what has occurred in other countries.
The younger and more active section of our Irish population is probably the best educated generation of people this country has ever produced since our independence. Participation levels at third level education among our younger population have jumped in the last decade. While many of these workers have never seen bad times, they are also more educated than their predecessors, who know of recession through bitter experience.
Hopefully Ireland’s more educated populace will resist the temptation to project onto helpless immigrants their fears and disappointments experienced in a tightening economic climate. Irish people surely still have the pride in themselves, and indeed the folk memory of similar treatment done to the Irish in Britain and elsewhere, when the Irish were poor and fleeing poverty and persecution in their own country.
