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What’s more, the places that have seen the greatest surges in migration have become poorer. In 2005-15 real wages in Migrantland fell by a tenth, much faster than the decline in the rest of Britain. On an “index of multiple deprivation”, a government measure that takes into account factors such as income, health and education, the area appears to have become relatively poorer over the past decade.

Are the newcomers to blame? Immigration may have heightened competition for some jobs, pushing pay down. But the effect is small. A House of Lords report in 2008 suggested that every 1% increase in the ratio of immigrants to natives in the working-age population leads to a 0.5% fall in wages for the lowest 10% of earners (and a similar rise for the top 10%). Since Migrantland relies on low-paid work, it probably suffered more than most.

But more powerful factors are at play. Because the area is disproportionately dependent on manufacturing, it has suffered from the industry’s decline. And since 2010 Conservative-led governments have slashed the number of civil servants, in a bid to right the public finances. The axe has fallen hard on the administrative jobs that are prevalent in unglamorous parts of the country. Migrantland’s public-sector jobs have disappeared 50% faster than those in Britain as a whole. In the Forest of Dean they have dropped by over a third. Meanwhile, cuts to working-age benefits have sucked away spending power.

Even before austerity, it had long been the case that poor places had the most threadbare public services. Medical staff, for instance, prefer to live in prosperous areas. Our analysis suggests that Migrantland is relatively deprived of general practitioners. Doctors for the East Midlands are trained in Nottingham and Leicester, but fewer people want to study there than in London, for instance. After training there, half go elsewhere. In 2014 there were 12 places for trainee doctors in Boston; only four were filled.

Excerpt from an interesting article http://www.economist.com/news/britai...grationparadox