Free movement of workers

When considering the question of whether movement of workers assures peace and prosperity, I had to think for a minute whether these two things went hand in hand. I have come to the conclusion that they dont. Taking prosperity first of all, there is no doubt of the benefits migrant workers bring to an economy. However, the loss of working age population from their native country can be damaging both to demographic status and to the economy. However this can be countered by 'social dumping' with foreign investement and company plants being set up so as to reduce their costs, thus improving the economy of the country invested in.

Does the free movement of workers assure peace? Well, if we take what these tabloid newspapers state and interpret it literally, as many people in Britain have done, we may be facing some future difficulties. It seems that tabloids always seem to search for the negative in every situation. In my opinion, this leads to a negative view on the country becoming predominant amongst the portion of the population who read tabloids. I was very disturbed a few months back when I watched Question Time. It was a debate on the right for muslim women to wear the hijab. A man sporting a Celtic shirt stood up and said that because 98% of the population of the UK wished for muslim women not to wear the hijab, that the woman in question must remove it. It was later discovered that this so called 98% was taken from a sample of people and printed in one of the tabloids.

To get back to my point, if we do not tackle the problems of this culture of negativity and sometimes even xenophobia expressed by the papers, who ironically leave Jade Goody out to hang for her unfortunate remarks during Celebrity Big Brother, we may well see a further resurgence in far right parties in the EU. If we want to ensure peace and stability yet further encourage migration, we need to be sure that the population are given more information of the many positive benefits of labour migration