00:00A snapshot of Britain in the 80s. Beachgoers in the seaside town of Bournemouth, a place
00:06which has always been a magnet for holidaymakers and seasonal workers.
00:12Fast forward to the final days of this summer and the change is undeniable. In the Bournemouth
00:18area between the 2011 and 2021 censuses, the non-British-born population went up by 47%
00:25and immigration everywhere has risen significantly since then.
00:30On the seafront we find immigration is something white British people want to talk about,
00:36but not openly and not on camera. The whole atmosphere of the place has changed
00:42and it's strange to hear foreign languages spoken so frequently in our country.
00:48Does that make you feel uncomfortable? It does.
00:51Is it the number of migrants that's coming? Reportedly so.
00:55And visually that seems to be the case. We all look at, we see what we see.
01:02What do you see? I don't see many, I suppose, white British people around.
01:08Why does that trouble you?
01:12Sorry, I actually can't answer that question.
01:14The woman we're talking to asks for a minute to gather her thoughts.
01:18It's a question at the heart of Britain's tortured relationship with migration and for
01:23some can be uncomfortable to consider. It's like a sensitive, emotional... I remember how it was.
01:30I remember the community. I'm worrying that our society as Brits is being undermined by the people
01:36who are coming in. For decades Britain has wrestled with the thorny issue of migration.
01:42Who should be allowed into the country and from where. Migration to the UK has changed since Brexit,
01:50but not in the way people who voted to leave Europe might have expected.
01:57Nine years ago, I visited Bournemouth to talk to people about migration ahead of the referendum.
02:02We've come back to the Cumberland Hotel. The EU flag no longer flies. It's a hotel where a decade ago,
02:10the majority of the workforce were non-British EU citizens, many from Eastern Europe.
02:17Sean Nell is the general manager and has worked at the hotel since before Brexit.
02:23Good morning.
02:23A lot of our workforce were EU nationals and obviously Brexit, a lot of them have left. They
02:29find out the work other than the hospitality. A lot of our workforce we see now that we can recruit
02:35from is probably South Asia. The staff gathered together for their own breakfast after the morning
02:41service tells the story of where most of the new recruits now are coming from. 28-year-old Shardul
02:49Thomas is from Delhi and works part-time at the Cumberland behind the bar. He did a master's in
02:55sports management and, like many others, came to the UK on a student visa. He says post-Brexit trade
03:02agreements with India opened up new opportunities for South Asians.
03:07After Brexit, the Europeans were less so we were able to get good jobs. It's good about people
03:17coming for good life, getting good life, upgrading their life.
03:21When I first came to the Cumberland Hotel, Margaret Kubik from Poland was the assistant restaurant
03:27manager. We enjoy breakfast, ladies. Nine years later, we tracked her down. So the first roundabout,
03:34we do nice and easy, left first exit. We discovered she's left the hospitality industry to work as a
03:41self-employed driving instructor. When we meet nine years ago, we, as the Polish people, we were very
03:49much accused of taking the jobs from English people, yes. And then now we are replaced by the South Asian
03:56people. Now they start at the bottom. In Bournemouth, just like many other towns in the UK, protests
04:03have sprung up outside hotels housing asylum seekers. The hotels have almost become a focal point for wider
04:10concerns about migration. We find the subject isn't as difficult to discuss amongst a crowd of like-minded
04:17people. We don't know who they are. We don't know who these people are. Who are they? It makes you
04:25feel
04:26it's not England anymore. The asylum hotel protests are generally countered by groups who are more
04:35sympathetic towards migrants. Do you feel the fabric of your town, if you were born here, has changed
04:41significantly because of migration? No, because it's always been a place where foreign language students
04:48visit. I think this lot down the road, they need somebody to hate. Now it's the Muslims, now it's the
04:55refugees. Ten years ago it's the Poles, the Eastern Europeans. With more councils vowing to launch legal
05:02challenges over the government's use of asylum hotels, the immigration protest movement shows no
05:08sign of abating. And Bournemouth, like so many other places, continues to wrestle with its identity.
05:15Lisa Holland, Sky News, Bournemouth.
05:25First of all, please take a look at the
