Places - the shifting flows of people

In-migration into an area leads to changing demographic and cultural characteristics, sometimes over a short period of time.

Examples include:

The accession of eight eastern European countries to the EU since 2004 (including Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic) have led to parts of Britain experiencing an increase in proportion of foreign-born residents.

This has led to dynamic social characteristics such as changes in employment patterns, retail trends and public services allocation.

London has been affected by waves of migration for centuries. In the south western suburbs of the city:

• Tooting has seen inflows of Irish migrants and more recently, since the 1960s, migrants from India and Pakistan.
• Brixton has been the focus for migration from the Caribbean since the post-war period of the 1950s.
• Stockwell has become a destination for Portuguese-speaking migrants since the1990s.
• Wimbledon and Earlsfield have both experienced large numbers of migrants from Australia and New Zealand since the 1990s.
• Woking has been the recipient of migrants from Pakistan for over a century (Britain’s first mosque – the Shah Jahan Mosque – was built there in 1898).