Driven underground: a migrant's tale

Sonya came to Britain from Romania with the promise of work and a place to live. Told by a man in her home country that he would find her and her family jobs where they could earn £400 a week, the prospect of life in Edinburgh seemed all too tempting. Little did she know that two months later she would be illegally living nine to a room in a squalid Leith flat with no job, no money and an exorbitant monthly rent to pay to a landlord who could evict her and her family at any time.

With their flights bought for them back in Romania and the flat in Edinburgh prearranged by a middleman, the migrants now owe a significant amount of money at interest that they cannot hope to pay back. Sonya is typical in that she speaks no English and has little knowledge of her legal rights. Having no tenant’s contract and £400 rent to pay every month for the single room in which her whole family sleeps – including two young children and a baby – she and the other fifty or so occupants who sleep in the property live in constant fear of being either sent back to Romania or thrown out onto the streets.

Her plight is a troubling example of a new form of economic exploitation occurring across Britain. Though citizens of the European Union, British law dictates that Romanians and Bulgarians are prohibited from employment in the United Kingdom unless they are “highly skilled” and go through a workers registration scheme. With the average wage in Romania being little more than £53 a week, some analysts claim that up to 50,000 have travelled to Britain since the country joined the EU on the 1 January 2007.

But many migrants such as Sonya are not eligible to work in the UK and, having been promised jobs by unscrupulous middlemen, find themselves effectively helpless in Britain. Trapped by debt, the Romanians' only option is to beg on the streets of Edinburgh and sell the Big Issue, the flat having a handful of official sellers’ badges that they rotate amongst themselves. The Romanian migrants, like many others, are too scared to go to the authorities about their living conditions, having been told by the middlemen that they will be arrested and sent back to Romania to face possible violence due to debts.

Unregistered with the local authorities, they are effectively driven underground where they can fall victim to unscrupulous landlords, gang-masters and middlemen, all too aware of the lucrative potential of desperate people unaware of their rights. Referred to as an economic “grey market” by the acting Romanian ambassador, this is the stark human cost of the government’s decision to allow migrants from Romania and Bulgaria to travel to the UK without allowing them to work legally - an unravelling crisis that much of the British media has so far chosen to disregard in favour of alarmist headlines.

The flat where Sonya lives is a small property located off Edinburgh’s Leith Walk that overflows with people. Taken into the room inhabited by Sonya and her family, they spoke to me of their problems first in Spanish and later through a translator. “Look at this,” she says, pointing around the small white room containing only a light and two beds, “this is misery. It is just misery. There are around fifty people living here, it is too crowded. We cannot live like this. We were told there would be work, that there would be jobs for all of us. But there is no work for us here so we can only beg and sell magazines. From that there is no way we can make enough money to live.”

Sitting on one of the beds was another woman, holding a baby little more than six months old. “My baby is teething, it is crying all the time and we don’t know how to get care for it. We go to the doctors but if you don’t have the right card they don’t see you. We want to find another place to live, it is just too expensive here. But where else can we live? How can we find another place?” As she speaks the children are running around the room playing with each other. The adults’ faces are understandably grave.

Both of the women are worried because on the coming Friday they have to pay the rent for the room. Each month, they say, the landlord or a Romanian man comes to collect the money in cash from the entire flat. If they fail to pay the rent the landlord will move the family onto the streets.

Others in the flat tell different stories and have different worries. One man, Daniel, says that he sold all of his possessions to afford to come to the UK having been promised work. He had found some unofficial employment as a fruit picker near Glasgow but he soon lost the work when it was discovered that he couldn’t speak English. “I try to find work as I need to feed my children and wife but without English there is no work”, he says. “I want to try to learn English so I can get work but it is hard.”

It appeared that many of the men had been employed in semi-legal conditions under gang-masters who only gave them occasional work. Conditions for these workers across Scotland have been thought to be worsening despite the efforts of local authorities to tackle the problem. Last year the Citizens Advice Bureau Scotland reported that they were hearing of an increasing number of instances of migrant workers from Eastern Europe falling victim to exploitative employers and employment agencies who paid below the minimum wage and made illegal deductions from earnings. There were also many reports of migrants living in overcrowded conditions and facing extortionate charges for rent and utility costs. With accommodation often being arranged by the same people who organise work for the migrants, the Romanians are often afraid that any complaint or report made to the authorities would lead to dismissal and homelessness.

At the root of the problem is the combination of British policy on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants—one that leaves many vulnerable to exploitation—and the migrants’ own ignorance of their legal rights. Speaking to The Journal, Romania’s acting ambassador to the United Kingdom Raduta Matache, though not aware of the specific situation in this particular Edinburgh flat, argued that despite educational drives having been launched by the Romanian and British governments, more action needed to be taken. “We are very concerned about allegations of Romanian citizens being exploited in the UK. Migrants sometimes believe they are informed of their rights but this is often not the case. This can leave them at risk, especially if they are unable to speak English. We have been working successfully with the British government and local authorities to combat the problem, but there are still issues and there is more to be done.”

Mrs Matache was also critical of the government’s decision to continue its policy of restricting Romanian access to the labour pool despite her country’s EU membership. “Currently Romanians account for only one per cent of migrant workers in Britain,” she said. “I feel this decision is symbolic rather than practical. It can put Romanian migrants at risk as they can fall into a grey [labour] market where they are vulnerable to exploitation.”

Another spokesman from the embassy, Sorin Baciu has been more candid about the situation many migrants find themselves in. “These situations are a very common practice. These poor people fall prey to go-betweens. They are approached by them in Romania and are promised a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. All that they find at the end of their journey is no money and a car park.”

Edinburgh City Council is now aware of the situation in the Leith flat following The Journal’s investigation, and a spokesman has stated that local authorities are “actively dealing with the situation.” But while there are likely to be serious legal consequences for the landlord it can only be hoped that temporary housing will be provided for the migrants. As each situation is treated on a “case by case basis” it is impossible to predict what will happen to Sonya, her family and the rest of the occupants.

What is clear is that the current policy of prohibiting migrants from Romania and Bulgaria from gaining legal employment in the British labour market is not working. Educational drives put in place by the British and Romanian authorities are going some way to discourage migrants from travelling to the UK under false information, but many like Sonya are still slipping through the net. In the current toxic atmosphere of exaggerated headlines and insensitivity, there is a danger that migrants will become dehumanised – seen only as statistics to be used for political gains. It is crucial in light of cases such as this that better provisions are put in place before more people suffer.