Economics PhD student Julian Costas-Fernandez has written a productivity study as part of a Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) report for the Home Office.
His paper, written with the help of the quarterly Labour Force Survey, will help to shape the UK’s immigration policy after Brexit. His main finding is that immigrants tend to be more productive than workers born in the UK.
Julian came to Essex in 2014 to study for a Masters in Applied Economics and Data Analysis, run by the Department of Economics and Institute for Social and Economic Research, and when it was complete, gained an ESRC scholarship to pursue a PhD here. It was during these studies that he got the opportunity to apply for a UK Research and Innovation policy internship.
Julian explains: “Once a year, different departments in government look for an intern, typically a PhD student. I applied for the Migration Advisory Committee, and in the first two months I was working on a replication of an existing paper. The results looked good, and it became something bigger. At the end of the three month internship, there was still some work to be done, so they commissioned me to write this paper.”
EEA Migration in the UK looks at the effects of immigration on various aspects of UK life, including wages and unemployment, public services, including the NHS, crime, and house prices. It recommends a number of post-Brexit measures, including:
- Lifting the cap on high-skilled migrants after Brexit
- Limiting the number of low-skilled workers allowed into the UK
- Not giving preferential treatment to EU citizens
Julian’s study was the only one written solely by a current PhD student, and uses data from the Labour Force Survey. He said the UK Data Service was very useful in his studies, adding: “The documentation is well organised, which saves a lot of time.”
On the MAC report, he says: “This is a working paper, so there may be some changes, but if you read the other commissioned papers, you pretty much get similar results: typically immigration has positive effects.”
Julian has specialised in labour economics, and concentrated on migration-related studies, for some time, and hopes to remain in the UK for the foreseeable future, doing similar work. “Academia, or research at an institution,” he says. “As long as it’s research, I’m fine with it.”