29 August 2014

WHY I'M NOT WORRIED ABOUT NET MIGRATION


The way things are going right now it sounds like everyone is worried about net migration figures. A while ago the latest figure was published and the Government is now set to miss it's target of getting net migration under 100,000 by 2015.

Specifically people are worried about low skilled immigration and if UKIP are to be believed most of this immigration is coming from within the EU, specifically Poland. Students are fine (as long as they're paying high tuition fees and thereby covering those of home students) highly paid people who require an employer to sponsor them are fine. Holiday makers are fine. In fact everyone is fine apart from people who are here illegally and low skilled workers.

And should we be worried about low skilled workers? If everything is being done legally then they're just as cheap/expensive as domestic workers and surely a domestic worker would have greater command of the English language and be more able to perform well in interviews, applications etc.

So really the problem is either 1) Illegal working conditions in which people are fudging visas/getting paid below minimum wage 2)Immigrants having greater skills in English or greater ability to work than current domestic workers.

Issue 1 is a problem with border control. Issue 2 is a culture problem which I think is being overblown by the media and encouraged by the welfare system.

So I'm not worried about immigration and I would argue that most people aren't worried about it other. I'd argue that most people are worried about border control more than immigration. Which is why I really don't understand why there's always focus on these net migration figures!

I've been informed it's because there's an overcrowding problem. I disagree. I don't think we have an overcrowding problem. I think we have a regionalisation problem. This is just an extension of the general infrastructure problem that we're having due to London being the only place that is growing. On top of the immigrants are the only thing stabilising our population right now because although it might not feel like it, family sizes are getting smaller and people are living longer. The reason Germany isn't doing as badly as everyone was predicting is in a large part due to the free movement of EU citizens.

Immigration is not the big deal it seems to be. Illegal immigration, yes. But that is not represented in the net migration figures.

15 August 2014

1 August 2014

INTERNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BUCKINGHAM




(This isn't really a review, more just raising awareness of the University of Buckingham. If anyone reading this was thinking of applying or wanted more information then please feel free to message me.)

After finishing my course at the University of Buckingham in December I was invited back to the economics department as an intern until April. The University had only just got funding for offering such internships so I didn't know much about what I would be doing and it wasn't paid;I was only able to claim back expenses but I knew I wasn't ready to move back home yet so I was happy to take the opportunity.

I interned mostly with Dr.Castañeda looking at optimal currency areas which mostly consisted of collecting data. If I'm honest I didn't work as much as some of the other interns (there were six of us) but I was happy for the work whereas another intern didn't complete the full term and another missed a deadline by quite a large margin.

I learnt a lot about how to use excel and go about research, which you think I would know about already, but there was only one module during my degree in which I had to look up raw data.

The way the work was structured was very flexible and I had to set my own hours and milestones. I was able to do a lot of things in the local area that I didn't have time for during my degree while also being to attend events such as The Freedom Festival. The skills I learnt using various features of excel and databases actually helped me with my next internship too.

In summary, I think if you want to go into research or academia then this would be a useful internship for you. It also allows for more freedom within the University. Two of the interns I worked with have stayed on until the end of July doing some more in-depth projects and both of them are going on to do a master's in October whereas the rest of us decided to move onto other skillsets.