When (EU) migration came to Great Yarmouth

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of EU migration on Great Yarmouth, a coastal town in Norfolk, England. Great Yarmouth had the fifth highest ‘leave’ vote nationally in the UK Brexit referendum, at over 70%. In this article, we want to show that Great Yarmouth has always been a town of migration but the sudden arrival of large numbers of EU nationals, exercising their free movement rights, in a relatively short space of time has created divisions in the town, divisions which may take decades to heal. Using legal geography as a prism, we offer an insight into the complex and evolving realities of European integration – and resistance to it. We argue that because EU free movement is a process, not an event, it has long-term effects, effects which have not, to-date, been fully recognised and explored. What we observe in Great Yarmouth is that free movement has, at best, been unevenly experienced by both movers and stayers and, at worst, has a divisive effect on the local community. Only by understanding the experience of migration on a particular community over time can the impact of free movement be properly understood, its consequences continuing long after Brexit.


Introduction
The coastal town of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England has a long history of migration. Most significant in the modern day has been migration by EU nationals exercising their free movement rights under EU law. Employers and recruitment agencies took advantage of EU labour to meet worker shortages in labour-intensive sectors such as agriculture and food processing, work seen as less desirable to locals, where the pay is low and conditions poor. This recruitment was successful: according to EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) data as many as 1 in every 10 residents in the Great Yarmouth area (population of about 100,000 1 ) is an EU national.
A former UKIP stronghold (Abranches et al., 2021), Great Yarmouth voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU in 2016, the fifth highest Leave vote in the country. Although Brexit was about more than immigration, 'free movement' was certainly one of the most contested and emotive issues during the campaign (Goodwin & Milazzo, 2017).
The refrain that migrants are 'coming over here and taking our jobs' was familiar, albeit contested. 2 In this article we look at those who have exercised their free movement rights, as well as considering the impact and legacy of free movement on the town of coming to Great Yarmouth where we have conducted our research. We use both EU law in our understanding of EU nationals' rights to come to look for work, to take up work offered, and to equal treatment at work, and legal geography to focus our study on one (particular) place. We draw on Orzeck and Hae's definition of legal geography that is 'the production of holistic knowledge about the place and function of law in contemporary (and historical) societies' (2020, p. 833). Indirectly, our study forms part of the process advocated by Anderson and Wilson (2018) of 'mapping how Brexit surfaces and becomes with everyday life and in everyday spaces'. Specifically, we wish to shine light on 'what it means [and now meant] to live in the EU and what it means to live under EU law' (De Witte, 2022). By undertaking this study, we hope to understand the realities of European integrationand resistance to it -'in a way that traditional accounts of EU law struggle with', (De Witte, 2022).
We argue that Great Yarmouth has always been a town of migration, that migration has occurred in different phases, with those in the town for longer, perhaps unsurprisingly, more integrated than more recent arrivals, especially those from the 2004 and 2007 accession countries who are seen as 'undesirable people do[ing] undesirable work … due to their lower educational background and occupation' (Abranches et al., 2021(Abranches et al., , p. 2884. We show that the experiences of the EU migrants ('the movers') has often not been good. This is not the dream of 'opportunity, benefits, excitement' often associated with EU free movement (Favell, 2008, p. 3).
We also wish to argue that the impact of EU migration on the town of Great Yarmouth has been significant. Although the local and migrant communities lead separateand largely segregatedlives, the arrival of large numbers of (relatively poor) but also ethnically diverse EU migrants in a short space of time, to a town already suffering from significant deprivation, created suspicion and hostility: that already pressed public services would be spread still more thinly, and that the identity of the town was changing. The Brexit vote has brought renewed focus onand money tothe town but this has been too little too late. For many on the receiving end of EU free movement ('the stayers'), the EU was seen as a threat to their way of life not a promise of a better one.
The article is structured as follows. Section 2 presents our methods, while section 3 introduces Great Yarmouth, the place where our research takes place, and explains the history of migration to the town. Section 4 looks at recent migration to the town following the three distinct waves of arrivals: Portuguese, Central and Eastern European (CEE), and Romanian and Bulgarian. Section 5 looks at the effect of this migration on the town. Section 6 concludes.

Methodology
We have undertaken a 'mixed methods' (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018) approach to collecting and analysing our data. The mixed methods approach, 'a pragmatic approach' (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018, p. 66) helped us to think about and understand our research enquiries. While the definition of mixed methods is both 'contested and evolving' (Blackham, 2022, p. 89), at its core, it 'combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand a research problem' (Blackham, 2022, p. 89).
Our mixed method research methodology has three elements. First, we undertook interviews with relevant professionals and community members in the town of Great Yarmouth. Interviews were recorded and transcribed (n = 22) or detailed notes taken (n = 3). Next, we conducted focus groups with the staff of the advice charity we worked with, GYROS, (four focus groups,10 staff participants) and with GYROS clients (seven focus groups, 52 participants) as well as eight in-depth interviews with frontline staff, the strategic director and the chair of trustees of the charity. The focus groups with GYROS clients were all multilingual with translation provided by GYROS staff.
Second, we undertook an ethnographic study, living in an HMO (house of multiple occupation) just off St Peter's Road in central Great Yarmouth for eight weeks. The eight residents (all Lithuanian and Latvian nationals) shared their stories and experiences of living and working in the town. We also interviewed the residents in a structured interview, asking about their experiences of living and working in the UK. We were also able to interview the landlord of the House, as well as a previous tenant who had lived in the house for ten years (n = 10 interviews). Where quotes/case studies are used from interviewees/ focus group participants or HMO residents, names have been changed.
Third, our research had a quantitative element. We have had access to a longitudinal (2015-2020) dataset held by GYROS. The database records, what GYROS terms, 'enquiry labels' noting what an individual seeks support about, including housing, employment and health. A client's attendance at the service is recorded under the relevant enquiry label on that day. Because clients can come in for help under the same enquiry label more than oncefor example housing support over a number of yearsthe client is allocated an individual ID number. This unique ID number was used by the researchers to identify whether the same client came in for help for more than one issue (other identifying information such as name/address were not shared). All enquiries in the dataset were recorded under the relevant label (e.g. housing, employment) and a unique case note was recorded for each visit. The dataset contains 3,018 unique enquiry labels with 6,856 unique case notes.
Consideration of the GYROS dataset involved a number of stages. It began with an analysis of the descriptive data, undertaken using STATA. We then analysed the free text of the client case notes attached to each enquiry label. This qualitative data analysis required reading and analysing the 6856 client case notes attached to each enquiry label, developing themes and subthemes, and coding them, returning regularly to the original dataset to develop themes further. These themes and subthemes were further developed from our fieldwork data.
We chose this three-pronged, mixed methods approach because it 'provides multiple ways to address a research problem' (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018, p. 47), and because the weakness of one approach (purely qualitative or quantitative data) could be addressed by another (and vice versa). For example, living in the HMO with eight other EU national residents provided us with a rich and meaningful understanding of their everyday lives and experiences of living in Great Yarmouth. Of course, their views do not represent or homogenise the experiences of all EU nationals living in Great Yarmouth, citizens of 27 different member states with different languages, cultures, histories, and circumstances.
However, looking at both the results of this ethnographic research with analysis of the GYROS database enabled us to assess whether the conditions and experiences of those in the HMO were more generalisable.
We were conscious, too, that living in a house with research participants and observing them might also lead to what is called the Hawthorne effect (Chiesa & Hobbs, 2008): 'where people modify their behaviour when they are being watched', (Oswald et al., 2014, p. 53). Due to the length of time spent in the HMO and the everyday familiarity and camaraderie built by the researcher with the other residents in the house it was felt that any initial 'Hawthorne effect' would diminish over time. Further, given that the researcher undertook additional activities with residents such as going out to restaurants, visiting local cafes, jogging along the seafront, and attending community events, this helped to build up trust which Oswald et al. recognised as important: the researcher must 'become[s] successfully immersed in the social setting by gaining trust and making workers feel relaxed and unthreatened' (2014:, p. 53).
Our mixed methods approach therefore seeks to address Creswell and Plano Clark's (2018, p. 47) concern that 'one might argue that quantitative research is weak in understanding the context or setting in which people live'. Our ethnographical work and qualitative interviews allow us to truly capture the context and reality of people's everyday lives. In this way, we use the qualitative data to triangulate (Blackham, 2022, p. 90), complement and develop the themes already drawn out from the quantitative data.
Finally, while our work has primarily been on the EU migrants living and working in Great Yarmouth, our interviews especially with those working in the community such as the police, have given us insight as to how the local community has responded to the EU migration, as has our own experiences living in the town. This has informed our observations in section 5 of this article. However, we begin by describing Great Yarmouth, its history and migration to the town.

The heyday of Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth, for centuries a successful port, has always been a European town. With its Roman and then Saxon settlement beginnings (Meeres, 2007, pp. 5-6), to its key geographical location for fishing connections in the North Sea and trade across the continent, Great Yarmouth has had a long and important history within the UK. Its success as a fishing port was rooted in the abundance of herring in the local waters: in the late nineteenth century Great Yarmouth was the leading herring port in the world. During the season 'the town's population would be swelled by thousandsby [mainly Scottish] fisherman, their wives and daughters who gutted and pickled the fish, and the coopers to make the barrels the fish were transported in' (Meeres, 2007, p. 27). However, by the mid-1950s fish stocks had been seriously depleted and Yarmouth's fishing fleet had dwindled to six (Firth, 2000, p. 12).
In the early twentieth Century Great Yarmouth was booming. With the first railway arriving in 1844, Great Yarmouth's fame as a holiday destination began to spread. The Wellington pier was built in 1853; the Britannia pier in 1858. Dickens stayed in Yarmouth in 1849 and part of David Copperfield, written in 1850, was set there. Tourists were entertained by travelling celebrity acts at the Great Yarmouth Pavilion and international circus acts at The Hippodrome. Houdini, the Beatles and Charlie Chaplin all appeared in the town.

Post war Great Yarmouth
As an East coast port, Great Yarmouth suffered badly in the war. The famous 'Rows', 145 streets with houses packed closely together (Hedges, 1973;Meeres, 2009, p. 17), were seriously damaged. The narrowest, Kittywitches Row, just 27 in. wide, was destroyed by enemy aircraft in 1942 (Hedges, 1973). By 1945, 20,000 properties in Great Yarmouth had been destroyed or damaged and 217 people killed (Tooke, 2013, p. 77). Much housing, often poor quality, was rapidly erected. Tourism started to decline too, a decline that became acute in the 1970s following the expansion of package holidays to the sun in Southern Europe (Miller, 2019: viii).
Great Yarmouth now experiences high levels of deprivation. Thirteen of its neighbourhoods are in the top 10% of areas of relative deprivation nationally, with some central wards featuring in the most deprived neighbourhoods nationally (Norfolk Insights, 2020). 20% of working age residents are in receipt of at least one out-of-work benefit. In some urban areas, like the Central & Nelson Wards, this figure is almost 50% (Norfolk Insights, 2020). The benefit claimant/Universal Credit claimant percentage as a proportion of residents aged 16-64 is more than double the national average (Norfolk Insights, 2020). 3 20% of children in the Borough are living in low-income families (pre-COVID) compared to 12% in Norfolk, and 15% in England. There are low levels of educational attainment toowith 12% of residents with no formal qualifications (7.8% for Great Britain). 4 Employment is a particular issue in Great Yarmouth, with much of the work being seasonal (tourism in the summer months and turkey processing in winter). Those who do earn higher wages tend to live in the local city, Norwich, commuting in and out each day. Great Yarmouth is in fact poorly served by transport connections. There are no motorways in Norfolk (it is often said the nearest motorway to the town is in the Netherlands). The main arterial road into the town, the 9-mile Acle Straight, is one up one down and often congested.

Post war immigration
After the war, a Greek Cypriot community came to Great Yarmouth, 'adding a welcome diversity to the modern town' (Meeres, 2009, p. 9): the Socratous family established the Rainbow Corner and Café Au Lait restaurants in 1947, and Loucas Chryssafi set up the Savoy restaurant in the 1950s (Meeres, 2007, p. 198). In 1967, the Church of England entrusted St. Peter's Church to the growing Greek Orthodox community. The Church, now dedicated to Saint Spyridon, hosts a Greek and Greek Cypriot mass every week, community coffee mornings and Greek school. 5 Over the generations these communities have become embedded in the town, hosting annual Greek Dinner Dances (attended by mostly local Great Yarmouth residents) and (previously) an annual epiphany event each January. 6 In the 1990s, Great Yarmouth saw a different type of migrationwhen the Borough was used to house asylum seekers in once flourishing B&Bs (Select Committee, 2017-19: 61). Refugees from (predominantly) Kosovo, but also from Russia, Kenya, Sri-Lanka, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Turkey, Afghanistan and Macedonia were relocated to the town by London boroughs: When we came, there were three rundown B&Bs filled with asylum seekers. And we were literally the only non-white population in Great Yarmouth. (Asylum seeker, now British citizen, placed in Great Yarmouth B&B in 2001). 7 The placing of vulnerable asylum seekers in the town, without any wraparound support, prompted some community members to set up a charity, GYROS, in 1998. 8 This charity has been working to support 'newcomers' to the town ever since. Since 2004, its client group has been predominantly EU nationals (see section 4) and it is this group that forms the focus of this article.

EU free movement rights
Having provided a picture of Great Yarmouth, and its previous history of migration, we want to focus on more recent migration facilitated by EU Law. The right to free movement of workers is found in Article 45 TFEU, with detail fleshed out in Regulation 492/11 and the Citizens' Rights Directive (CRD) 2004/38/EC. The CRD gives every EU citizen the right to reside in another Member State for an initial period of three months, with no conditions on their stay (apart from passport/ID card). The right to reside for more than three months remains subject to certain conditions such as exercising Treaty rights as a worker, jobseeker, or a self-employed person. EU or third-country-national family members can also move to reside with the EU migrant.
Before 31 December 2020, EU citizens could (but did not have to) apply to the UK Home Office to secure their EEA (PR) (permanent resident) status. This has now been replaced by the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS), introduced to give effect to the UK government's commitments under the Withdrawal Agreement, to protect the rights of EU migrants. EUSS requires all EU nationals to register for either Settled Status (SS), if they have more than five years residence, or Pre-Settled Status (PS) post Brexit, if they have less than five years.
With the introduction of the EUSS, the UK gained for the first time a more accurate picture of the number of EU nationals living in the UK. The most recent data shows 'an estimated 6.9 million applications to the scheme up to 30 September 2022, of which 6.3 million were from EEA and Swiss nationals and approximately 533,000 from non-EEA nationals'. 9 Of the 6.3 million EU nationals, Polish and Romanians represent 40% of total applications (19% and 21% respectively). In respect of the Great Yarmouth area (population of about 100,000 10 ), as many as 1 in every 10 residents (and possibly 1 in 4 in the central wards, the poorest part of the town) are (now) EU nationals, double the ONS 2019 population estimate. 11 For Great Yarmouth, almost 90% of the total applications come from just five countries (see Figure 1), the largest group being Portuguese, followed by Lithuanians and Romanians.

The experiences of EU migrant workers in Great Yarmouth
EU nationals generally came to Great Yarmouth, exercising their EU free movement rights, in different phases, broadly coinciding with the accession dates of their countries to the EU: first, Portuguese migration, including a large diasporic Portuguese population particularly from Africa and Asia, then the 'Eastern Bloc' phase of migration particularly Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian nationals, and, most recently, 'A2' phase of migration, particularly Romanian and Romanian Roma migration (Wemyss & Cassidy, 2017).
Within the county of Norfolk, 40% of all Portuguese national applications for EUSS live in Great Yarmouth. 12 The long-term impact of this Portuguese migration can be readily observed in the numerous Portuguese cafes, restaurants, festivals, community groups, and supermarkets (Lowndes, 2020). There is also a dedicated Portuguese language mass in the local Church on Sundays. These cafes and supermarkets act as a meeting point for the local Portuguese community; there is little evidence of cross-community involvement.
The 'Portuguese' in Great Yarmouth are not one homogenous group. Due to its colonial history, the citizens of a number of African, South American and Asian countries also have Portuguese nationality (Guma & Dafydd Jones, 2019). Some have never lived in Portugal, but they too exercised EU free movement rights, including coming to Great Yarmouth. Nationals from each Lusophone country bring their own language, dialect, culture, heritage, customs and practices.
The Roma are Europe's largest ethnic minority which continue to suffer 'prejudice and social exclusion, despite the discrimination ban across EU Member States'. 13 About 6% of GYROS total client group in 2021 (in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk and Ipswich, Suffolk) selfidentified as Roma, the majority from Romania and Bulgaria. 14 These A2 EU migrants have 'figured prominently in the public consciousness and (tabloid) media as objects of fear, scorn and contempt' and, as a community, they have often borne the brunt of public anxiety over "East European" migration', (Fox et al., 2015, p. 735), (see further section 5.2). What these different groups have in common is that they all came for work, not just with Bernard Matthews, 15 a particularly visible and well-known poultry factory, but also with other employers in meat processing, agriculture and fruit picking (Almeida & Corkill, 2010, p. 729, 735). This work is labour-intensive and low-paid, involving long, anti-social shifts. The work is often agency work and, more recently, zero-hours contracts (Barnard et al., 2022;Barnard & Ludlow, 2016;Currie, 2022). As we have documented elsewhere (Barnard et al., 2022), their experiences have not been good. The work is hard, with long shifts and factories are cold, wet, and busy places. All tell us they are exhausted, and they just sleep on their days off, all of which affects family life: It's impossible. … If you work 12 and a half hours plus to travel, if you've got children at home and family to look after, cook for them. Your brain just goes all, all … just exhausted. (Regina) They also suffer from in-work poverty, linked with low paid work. Our interviewees tell us that a sudden reduction in hours on their ZHCs, means a radical drop in income resulting in requests for food parcels to meet basic needs, and the inability to meet the costs of transport to work. This poverty can be compounded by (increasingly) restrictive access to social welfare benefits for EU nationals living in the UK both pre-and post-Brexit (O'Brien, 2017, p. 2).
Equally housing conditions in the town are poor (Barnard et al., 2024). The 'House' of our ethnographical work is a typical accommodation arrangement for migrant workers in the town-an 8-bedroom HMO (house of multiple occupation). The House had no central heating and no Wi-Fi. It suffered from significant damp and mould, as well as poor insulation and ventilation. Parts of the house were unfinished, with 'construction site, do not enter' blocking access to some areas-signs which were over 10 years old. Each resident had a small portable heater in their room for warmth. No tenancy agreements were in place, and tenants paid their rent in cash (although we were told they could ask for a tenancy agreement/ rent receipt if one was needed).
For many migrant workers we spoke to housing was linked to their employment (at least at first arrival). Initially, Bernard Mathews (who recruited workers directly from Portugal), employed a housing officer to find accommodation for their new workers. Many A8 nationals we spoke to had paid someone privately to arrange work and housing for thema debt they needed to pay off once they arrived in the UK. Some faced additional chargesfor example, one interviewee (Edita) said she would have had to pay £10 per week not to live in the accommodation provided with her work. Another, Rasa, said she was placed in a small 'hotel' room with another person and that it felt like you were sleeping next to a stranger: they put us in a little hotel. A double room. Very little room. We washed our jeans in a toilet sink. The basin … We washed our jeans there. And it was horrible (Rasa).
Cohorts of Portuguese workers for Bernard Matthews (and others), Edita and Rasa, all moved to the Great Yarmouth almost 20 years ago now. More recently (2021), Bulgarian nationals we spoke to shared similar experiences-a recruitment agency offering them accommodation in parallel with factory work. The accommodation was paid for by subtracting hours from their payslip-they tell us they think they are deducted three hours each per person per week to pay for their accommodation but were not exactly sure how much their accommodation costs. The group of individuals we spoke to are unable to read/write in their own language and unsure of what they had signed in English when they began work. They are from the Roma community and said they moved to the UK as the discrimination they faced in Bulgaria meant they could not find any work-in England they had work (albeit zero hour). Echoing earlier groups' experiences-the condition of the accommodation is poor: each live in a shared room and share bathroom and kitchen facilities with 15 others. They spoke of alcohol and drug abuse as being common in the accommodation.
As we will see in section 5, this poor-quality accommodation can cause tensions in the town, especially if lack of communal areas means people spend more time out of the accommodation and in the town together where they can meet-up.

The reaction to EU migration to the town
The previous section has shown the different phases of EU migration to Great Yarmouth in recent years and that as many as 1 in 4 of the population of the central wards may be EU nationals. There was and still is a physical divide in the town between local residents and (EU) migrants, with EU migrants clustered in the town's two most urban wards (Central and Northgate), 16 living mainly in HMOs (formally magnificent Victorian/Edwardian villas). So, there is a visible concentration of the migrant population, now increasingly served by a proliferation of small-scale Eastern European and Portuguese supermarkets. It is understandable if the local population thought that the face of its town was changing and fast.
The Economist noted in 2016 17 that where foreign-born populations increased by more than 200% between 2001 and 2014, a Leave vote followed in 94% of cases. 'High levels of immigration don't seem to bother Britons; high rates of change do'. In Great Yarmouth's case, our analysis (based on comparing ONS 2011 data 18 to the Home Office's 2021 EUSS data) shows a 220% increase in migration to the town from post 2004 EU Member states. It is therefore unsurprising that there was such strong support for a vote to Leave the EU.
However, the period of increased EU migration to Great Yarmouth coincided with a time of national austerity and welfare reform in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis (e.g. Wilkinson & Ortega-Alcázar, 2017). Research shows towns already deprived were hit hardest by austerity, and seaside towns in particular were badly affected (Beatty & Fothergill, 2014). Beatty and Fothergill also show that the impact of welfare reforms 2014/2015 per working age adult. In Great Yarmouth, this was a loss of £610.00 per person, thus increasing the geographical inequality faced by those living in the town (2014, p. 12). In 2014-2015, the period coinciding with the run up to the referendum. Great Yarmouth Borough Council warned it was relying on its reserves and that it was set 'to run out of resources in 2015-2016'. 19 The Council reports that it suffered the country's largest proportional reduction in spending power, at 18.7%. 20 It would be understandable, then, that locals might fear the town's already stretched resources were coming under even further pressure from poor EU migrants, asserting their EU equal treatment rights.
We would therefore argue that it was a combination of rapid change of the makeup of the local population, and austerity, that led to broad hostility to EU free movement.
Norfolk county saw a (record) 25% increase in hate crime following the Brexit referendum. 21

A divided community
There is little evidence of interaction between the migrant and local communities, at least among the older population, in part because of language barriers and in part because of the long anti-social shifts worked by migrants. CEE and Romanian migrants are in the town of Great Yarmouth but not of the town. Others have noted this too: the 'Right to Succeed' project 22 is looking at supporting deprived communities in the town (especially those living in the more central wards where deprivation is more entrenched). It says that local people feel that the 'transient' nature and increasingly diverse population in the town centre, a population which does not mix, has resulted in 'People feeling there is a loss of ownership of the area, especially young people'. 23 There is also fear on both sides. For EU migrants there is fear of hostility from the local community which pre-dates both Brexit and the Referendum (Guma & Dafydd Jones, 2019;Lafleur & Mescoli, 2018) especially against Polish and Romanian migrants (Rzepnikowska, 2019). The majority of the participants in our focus groups have, at one time or another, encountered 'go home' rhetoric (Barnard et al., 2021, p. 369) or have been subject to physical harm, even if low level. For residents, they fear violence on the part of the migrant community (Abranches et al., 2021(Abranches et al., , p. 2887) and a sense that part of their town is a no-go zone for locals, particularly the area around St. Peter's Road.
The segregated lives can cause difficulties, most recently with the Romanian community following rumours of the abduction of a child and an incident involving an ATM machine in the town centre where banks reported people were huddled around a cash machine but with only one person was obtaining cash: when we drilled down to was because of their maths and their English grasp, one person would know how to use the cash machine. So that one person was using multiple cards but obtaining the cash and then we had the baby snatching rumours going around in the communities, which was driven mainly on Facebook. And, I mean, and that was just bizarre, because we had no reported children stolen (interview with Police). 24 The police tell us that these rumours caused significant tensions in the town, compounded by perceptions that the new community was (very visibly) spending time together in the street or in the town centre. In reality, this was driven by their accommodation which did not have any social space and so 'they were spending more time out in the community than normal'. 25 Black EU migrants have also found life particularly difficult in Great Yarmouth, a town which was historically predominantly white, as noted above by a (previous) asylum seeker. The arrival of a significant population of non-white EU migrants has been a significantly under-recognised and under-reported aspect of EU migration generally but specifically to the East of England. This group is particularly 'invisibilised' within EU free movement discourse too (Solanke, 2009, p. 1;Solanke, 2020). We have observed this in Great Yarmouth. Take the case of Luca. 26 Just after his arrival in Yarmouth aged 7, Luca and his brother were assaulted in the park by local (English) children telling them to 'get the fuck out of here, because you don't belong here. Go back to your country.' They had shoes and stones thrown at them. Luca then found that all the same children were in his new primary school class where, he says, his family were the only non-English and 'the only non-white students'. The subsequent treatment by the local children was worse than the initial attack: 'at the age of seven … up until the age of 10, I suffered from racism, discrimination, bullying' … how teachers were reacting towards certain things [made things worse] rather than helping the situations.' The attacks didn't subside until Luca and his family moved both school (and house) to central Great Yarmouth, where there was a more established migrant population. His new primary school had a diverse student body including Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanian and other students and an EAL (English as an additional language) teacher who 'was amazing, she would help any students that came from abroad, and basically work with the migrant community in the school'.
The racism is not necessarily just from the local community. It can also come from within the nationality community (as well as from other migrant community groups). Take Mariana, born in Mozambique. 27 In the late 70s, her family fled Civil War, moving to Lisbon where she grew up and married. Her husband was made redundant and was then recruited in Lisbon by Bernard Matthews to work in Great Yarmouth; Mariana moved to the UK to join him. She says because she speaks English so well, she feels she is categorised differently by (white) Portuguese people in Yarmouth than she might be otherwise, 'but there is always this idea, of [Portuguese] being better'. She says there can be an unspoken (but felt) categorisation within the Portuguese community that, for example the East Timorese community can be seen as 'not really Portuguese, they just have the passport. Because they don't even speak Portuguese'.
The hostility to the Romanian, Roma and Black communities reveals in stark terms the well-researched phenomenon of the dichotomy between 'desirable' and 'undesirable' migrants (Anderson, 2013, p. 2). The research by Abranches et al on Great Yarmouth (2021, p. 2885 talks of William remembering the arrival of Greek Cypriots during the 1970s, 'as a positive source of cultural diversity and economic incentive'. This coincides with our observations: the Cypriot community are seen as 'desirable' migrants, those from CEE, and especially the Romanians, are not. This may change with the next generation. Around 6% of children in Norfolk schools were not born in the UK. 28 2,000 EUSS applications in the Borough come from those under 18 (again approximately 10% of the wider under 18 age group for the town (ONS Census 2011)). Our interview from the local primary school 29 suggests that the children from migrant communities integrate well once they have mastered English. Young adults from migrant communities also speak of greater tolerance towards diversity in the town.

Investment in the town
In more recent years Yarmouth has benefitted from significant investment as part of the government's levelling up agenda. The Venetian Waterways on the Seafront (built 1926) have been fully restored, the Winter Gardens (1904) are benefitting from a £10 million face lift, the BBC Concert orchestra has taken up a three-year residence in the town, 30 and millions are being spent on the central Market Place regeneration 31 , a Third River Crossing 32 and a new Marina Leisure Centre. 33 Banksy left his footprint on the walls in summer 2021, adding a new tourist attraction to the town. However, as one debt adviser working in the town dryly asks: ' Will local people will be able to afford to use these new facilities, such as the Marina Centre swimming pool, if they are struggling to put food on the table?'. 34 There is also an attempt to continue to develop a more skilled economy in Great Yarmouth. The town is developing expertise in wind turbines and that has brought higherskilled workers including (EU) migrants to Great Yarmouth, at least temporarily. 35 However, many of these high skilled people choose not to live in the town itself, preferring to live in the university town of Norwich 20 miles away or in the surrounding villages.

Longer term prospects
Given their experiences, will the migrant community stay in Great Yarmouth? For many we interviewed, the UK is home now. Their children/ extended family are here too. Some people have now lived in the UK for almost twenty years. For Rasa (Latvian, 60s, lived in the UK for 18 years), both her adult children and now grandchildren live in the UK. Many report that, despite Brexit and despite the labour-intensive, low paid work, life is better here. Some tell us that their goal is, for example, to move from being an agency factory worker to being employed directly by the factory where there is much more security. Those with any English language skills can move 'up' to factory-line mangers/ line coordinators more quickly. Although not necessarily for much more pay, the working conditions are better than working directly on the factory line.
Agata (Latvian, (late) 50s) 36 has been living in the UK for five years, working throughout in a chicken factory since she arrived: I hope to retire in 5 years' time. I really hope to qualify for the state pension in the UK. I really hope that I will continue to have good health and you never know what the future will bring. … . My decision to come to the UK has been good for me and my life here is good, better than in Latvia (Agata).
These observations confirm the findings of others: Grzymala-Kazlowska (2018) describes Polish migrants' adaptation and settlement processes in the UK as 'social anchoring' by establishing 'footholds' in their new country while also maintaining links with their Polishness and Poland. Tyrrell et al. (2019) draw similar conclusions for the younger generation of EU-8 migrants.
However, this will also mean there are further issues coming down the line. One consequence of long-term, permanent migration to the UK is the health and social care costs that this will bring. The GYROS data reveals a client group with an average age of 46 years. These are not young, healthy migrants traditionally associated with economic employment migration, 37 but rather long-term residents more likely to be planning their retirement-many dealing with the physical impacts to their health of 20 or more years in labour-intensive work (Barnard et al., 2022, p. 501). This has important implications for future health and social care policy, especially at a Borough-level for Great Yarmouth, which already sees high levels of health needs.

Conclusion
To date, much research has been about high skilled EU migrants moving to cities. For example, Favell (2008), in his book Eurostars and Eurocities, considers EU free movement through the prism of predominantly West Europeans, who are mostly skilled, mobile, multi-lingual, and moving to EU capital cities. As he notes, 'European freedom of movement is a unique legal and political construction in the modern world, in which one has the right to move, travel, live, work, study and retire without frontiers. In which any invocation of national boundary to restrict these opportunities for European foreigners is considered discrimination ' (2008:, p. 3). Research to-date on free movement has often been focused on cities, such as London (Lulle et al., 2018a;2018b) or Manchester (Rzepnikowska, 2019). It also predominantly features (Western) EU nationals who can speak English and can more easily participate in UK-based academic research, although that is changing (see e.g. Guma & Dafydd Jones, 2019).
The under-representation of Eastern European (broadly defined) nationality groups in research has been noted elsewhere (Buetlemann & Bulat, 2021: 10). Our research has helped to fill this gap, looking at EU migrants, mostly from post-2004 Member States, and in a very different semi-rural/coastal locations, namely those coming to work in the fields and food production factories in and around Great Yarmouth in low paid employment, with poor, if any, English language skills. Those working in rural farms and factories are among some of the most marginalised and invisible communities, living within already significantly deprived areas. Focusing our study in this way gives us a more holistic picture of EU free movement to the UK, as well as the day-to-day lived experience of the free movers to the town, and the impact on the town of the free movers. This article therefore builds on the growing body of scholarship that 'stresses the relevance of spatial and geographical contexts in the study of European labour relations, especially in the context of mobile work' (Iossa & Persdotter, 2020, p. 1086 and also the lived experience and understanding of free movement and EU citizenship (Van den Hoegen et al., 2022), both pre-and post-Brexit (Botterill et al., 2019;Kostakopoulou, 2018).
The story is not altogether a happy one. For those coming to work in the chicken factories around Great Yarmouth, unlike Favell's Eurostars living in Eurocities, free movement can be experienced (at least initially) as a loss of control, debt and dependency, tied to one employer or agency and to associated substandard housing. People move into low paid, low skilled work, and have little opportunity to learn English, nor to engage with the wider community (especially when they first migrate). Nor do they have the opportunities to progress. The equal treatment their EU citizenship afforded them is not fully realised when doing precarious work in poor working conditions. For those with good English, there is a chance of getting a 'better job' if not a 'dream job', and for their children there is hope of British citizenship. However, English language skill progression appears limited in our dataset-the average length of time already in the UK is 9 years, for a cohort with overwhelmingly low/limited English language skills. Yet, it is worth remembering that for people like Agata, the situation in Great Yarmouth is better than she had back in Latvia.
From the perspective of the town of Great Yarmouth, there is no doubt that it has suffered from decades of under-investment, austerity, and neglect. The referendum gave voters the opportunity to raise their concerns. In part, their concern was about levels of migration and the changing face of their town. But it was also a protest about the absence of opportunities for them and their familiesan increase of pessimism about the future (Coleman, 2016). For the local population, free movement is what other (foreign) people did. It happened to them and, as far as they are concerned, it did not benefit them or their families (cf Stewart Leith et al., 2019). This helps to explain why those in this rural town were so resistant to the project of integration. As far as they could see, it did not benefit them.
So, what happened when EU migration came to Great Yarmouth? The town has changed. It is now more diverse, ethnically and culturally. Migrant communities have opened a range of businesses in the town centre, contributing to the local economy. New businesses, new churches, more HMOs mean the physical space too has changed, where the law operates has changed, the legal geography of the town has been altered by free movement. For the town itself, there may be some hope that, with the passage of time, the post-2004 migration becomes more accepted, those with settled status become more integrated and are, eventually, like the Greek Cypriots, seen as assets to the town, and not perceived as burdens who are 'othered' and marginalised.