One of the people I know who is most vocal about immigration not working is a migrant from North Africa.
For various reasons he mixes a lot more with other migrants than I do and he gets really pissed off with certain groups because of cultural differences in attitudes to work and the to the state.
He'd argue that culturally certain nationalities will try and game the system as much as they can - they come from cultures where corruption is rife. You survive by getting the most out of the state and the establishment as you can. Attitudes to rules are very different.You bend them, you don't follow them. Health and safety is an alien concept.
He's trying to compete with people like this with his business (trade).
Some he thinks have come to milk the system and not work hard, whilst he has done exactly the opposite and tried to intergrate.
Now there's lots of stuff written on cultural differences with regards to time keeping and authority. Not everyone from the same country is like that, but more often than not there are trends. There's a whole industry advising multinationals on how to navigate these cultural differences.
There's also localised cultural differences within the UK. Something we don't really appreciate and have good understanding of.
The best example I use for this is this tradition in old mining towns about pride through work that came from the church and methodist ideas.When the work was removed, the pride went and so did this sense of dignity.
You also have weird identity related things with the North that people from the South just don't get. If you look at the towns around Manchester the variation in accents is HUGE. Someone from the south will just think 'northern'. But someone from the North will be able to tell which town someone is from. These towns all had pride and rivalry from that identity. Most of it was friendly, but it MATTERED.
In having huge shifts in migration - not just from abroad, but also the movement of people from the South to the North, this has affected these senses of identity. Thats why I talk about gentrification as being part of the issue.
There's a different value culture where priorities are on other things. Its hard to explain - but its a bit like different cultural attitudes to time. You have to be mindful of this when communicating to different groups.
I've ALWAYS felt this and been sensitive to it. I'm middle class in the North. You FEEL it and I've had learn to talk in different ways and about different things in different social situations because of these cultural differences I would come across every day. Northern Middle Class is weirdly different to people who are middle class from the South too, to add a different aspect.
Now imagine you've been a community which has been isolated from these differences much more. Then things start to change, and not for the better.
There is an inability to communicate across many many different groups, in relation to issues over poverty and social deprivation. Writing people off as 'racist' for voting for Reform, misses the point. Farage is communicating with people in certain groups better than the like of Labour and the Tories. Think about this. Hard. Why is he managing to do this. Its too easy to say its down to racism. Its not. Its about a better understanding of these underlying cultural identity issues and histories and about being able to exploit poverty.
Why do middle class people understand and value cultural differences with people who live abroad, but not within their own country?
I find the subject fascinating. But yes, class is DEFINITELY a massive thing.
And its combined with a bunch of opportunist dickheads looking to capitalise on this fragility when ever they can.