Image: Sammy-Sander, Pixabay
By Luke Mantle, Anastasiia Savina, and Leo Ward
Residents on Holloway Road said Tuesday that they were scared immigrants were taking their jobs.
“It’s getting out of control,” said, Jack, a 75-year-old retired financial analyst who declined to give his last name. “People come here, and locals can’t get work.”
For Jack, a lifelong Islington resident, the issue is not just job competition, but the injustice regarding government benefits. “Immigrants get supported, while British people who’ve paid taxes for years are left behind.”
One of Jack’s favourite haunts. Image: Anastasiia Savina
But not everyone agrees that immigrants are to blame. Carl, 55, is originally from New York with family from Jamaica, and now runs a small Caribbean restaurant near Arsenal stadium called ‘Reggae Flames’.
“Immigrants helped build this country,” Carl argued. “Some people here just don’t want to work. They don’t want to go into the fields or do hard labour.”
For Carl, the idea that immigrants are “taking” jobs is misleading as they’re doing the work others refuse to.
Carl believes that immigration has built this country, and immigrants are needed otherwise who else will do the dirty work that the local community will not do such as cleaning and other low tier jobs within society.
Image: Leo Ward
Debates Heating Up
As political debates heat up over immigration and employment, who’s really getting the jobs – and what’s being lost in the noise? Contrasting opinions reflect a deeper tension between perception and reality.
A man in a red jacket and cap stands on a street corner in Islington. Oliver is 40 and sells cigarettes to passersby for £6. He dreams of becoming famous with a YouTube channel about food.
He doesn’t hide the fact that what he does is illegal. But, as he says, “there’s no other way to survive”.
Oliver was born in London. His father is Turkish, his mother is French. He has not gotten a job or opened his own shop because he believes the system is unfair, that regular jobs pay too little, and that starting a business is difficult due to high taxes and regulations that “help the big guys but stifle the little ones”. On the street, he can earn more and be free.
“People say immigrants are taking our jobs, but no one can take your job. If someone got a job before you, they were just faster. We’re all different, but the problem isn’t with people. The problem is with the system,” he says.
Is it the government?
Oliver believes it’s the government, not immigrants, that creates tension between people. Politicians are using the issue of immigration to distract from the real problems of low wages, rising prices, and hopelessness, he adds.
“They divide us into ‘us’ and ‘them,'” he says. “But we’re all just trying to survive.” Oliver doesn’t deny breaking the law, but he sees it as a symptom of a disease, not a crime.
“Job” means “just over broke,” in his opinion. “A job keeps you just above poverty. People toil away, only to return to the same job the next day. Is that life?” He’s certain that young people today aren’t looking for easy paths; they simply don’t see honest ones.
“The system forces us to choose between poverty and breaking the rules. I chose the streets. Not because I want to, but because there’s no choice, and I don’t want to be in this system.”
For Oliver, borders and documents are simply a tool of control, devised by the powerful. “We’re all human. We all want to eat, pay our rent, and live in peace. Why is that a crime?”
When he says this, there’s no anger in his voice, only quiet desperation and bitter realism. Oliver sees the rich getting richer, while the streets live by their own rules. And by selling his cigarettes, he seems to be telling the world, “I don’t agree, but I’m still here.”
Over the 2000s, immigration stayed at a growth between 200,000 to 300,00; however, recently, from 2022 to current, immigration has climbed steeply, reaching up to 500,000 in net migration. However, immigration has affected England as a whole; it has been mainly concentrated in the London boroughs.
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