Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Overseas students and returning British citizens impact on UK migration

Overseas students and returning British citizens impact on UK migration

Len Arthur 14 June 2016

You may be surprised, as I was, when I first discovered that overseas students coming to the UK were considered as part of the migrant inflow figures. When I looked a bit deeper I also discovered that returning British citizens were also included in these figures.

Now this is not to argue that this shouldn’t happen. When counting something lines of definition have to be drawn somewhere and infinite graduations of meaning don’t help the maths. So this is not to suggest that the definition of who is a migrant is wrong or needs updating - though I think there may be a good case for this - it is just that raw data can look very different when seen from a qualitative view that social meanings do have graduations.

My surprise about both categories being included in the migrant definition was that I started out with a common assumption that migration meant someone from another country moving to another for a longish period of time for family or work reasons. Overseas students are in the UK to study for a defined period of time and make a major contribution to our education system, particularly universities, both in terms of income and intellectual input. If they go on to work here the UK reaps the benefit of this education. Again returning British citizens do not fall into the common assumption of a migrant being a person with citizenship of another country.

So, without making any changes in definition, it is possible to use current data to assess what impact it would have on the net migration figure to the UK, if we put to one side overseas students and British citizens as part of the migrant inflow to the UK.

First some basics. Migration to and from a country is assessed by taking account of total inflows and outflows over a period of time. The difference in the two figures is defined as net migration and tends to be the figure the debate homes in on ‘millions coming to the country’ etc.

Taking the 10 year period from 2006 to 2015, the latest information available, we have a total inflow figure of 5.770m coming to the UK. The total outflow figure is 3.478m making a total of net migration of 2.489m. This net figure is larger than if you do the calculation as adjustments were made following the 2011 census.

Now, of the total inflow figure of 5.770m 1.875m are overseas students, and 0.829m are returning British citizens. Adding the figures for overseas students and British citizens together we arrive at 2.704m for the 10 year period.

You can see where this is now going. If you follow the argument about putting to one side the categories of British citizens and overseas students we can set deduct the total of these two figures from the starting inflow figure of 5.770m. This results in a different inflow figure of 3.066m.
Using this adjusted inflow figure of 3,066m a different net migration figure can be arrived at. Total outflow of migrants from the UK over the same period is as quoted above 3.478m. Now the surprise, take this from the adjusted flow figure of 3,066m and the result is minus yes minus 0.412m.

Numbers are important in the arguments about migration but so is getting a human and qualitative understanding of what the figures mean. What these calculations indicate is that net migration to the UK is not what is commonly assumed either in numbers or in terms of people and we should be more critical of the case made by the right.

Hopefully, using existing data and not wild projections these calculations can help make the point.


Period covered is the ten years 2006 – 2015

Total net inflow of migrants                    5.770m
Inflow adjusted for BS+OS                     - 2.704m       
=3.066m
Minus total outflow                                -3.478m
Net flow of migrants to UK as result        - 0.412m



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