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Late 19th century: Migration of Jews from Eastern Europe

• In the 19th century thousands of Jewish people migrated to Britain because they were the victims of vicious religious persecution throughout Eastern Europe but especially within the Russian Empire.
• Some of these Jewish migrants only stopped off in England before heading to America but many chose to remain in the port cities they first landed in. This is how a large Jewish community grew in London’s East End during this period.
• In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the UK population was boosted by more than 2.2 million immigrants.
• Many of these migrants were asylum seekers from around the world, fleeing war and persecution.

Post-2004: Migration of Eastern European workers in the EU

• In 2004 ten new countries joined the European Union; most of these countries were former communist countries in Eastern Europe.
• Poland and Hungary, the largest of these new EU nations, were relatively economically undeveloped and many thousands chose to migrate to seek employment.
• Other EU nations restricted the number of migrants from these countries and so many thousands came to Britain, which did not put any limit on the number of EU migrants.