Anti-Polish Migrant Moral Panic in the UK: Rethinking Employment Insecurities and Moral Regulation

• DOI: 10.13060/00380288.2015.51.3.180
• Publication Date: 2015-08-07T12:08:41Z
• Authors: Ian Fitzgerald; Rafal Smoczynski
• Keywords: Moral Panic; Elite; Irrational number

This article examines British societal reactions to Polish migrant workers using a framework that combines recent developments of the moral panic concept informed by sociology regulation and risk governance studies. Given multi-mediated nature contemporary panics in contrast conventional analysis focusing on newspaper coverage this is based migrants' self-reported experiences. Moral claims making about 'taking jobs' 'abusing social benefits' are perceived respondents themselves. Our line with Sean Hier's conceptualisations interplay between individualised management claims-making, which manifestations conflictual sites neo-liberal project prudentialism. The argues anti-Polish campaign Britain after 2004, dramatised migrants as 'stealing native population, cannot be properly analysed an irrational ethnic bias or elite-engineering but rather expression destabilising effects employment insecurities within Western societies.