Did 2004 EU expansion matter to new migrants' housing tenure and settlement choices in England?

This paper analyses how migration policy changes affect the housing and location patterns of immigrants in the UK. Using the UK Longitudinal Household Survey, we examine the relationship between the 2004 EU accession as a migration policy change and housing and locational patterns. In addition to confirming the importance of migration policy frameworks, we find that liberalised migration can create a wave of immigrants with a lower propensity for homeownership and may cause the dispersion of new immigrants to locations away from the gateway cities and primary immigrant clusters such as London. The results are robust to several sensitivity tests.