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. Using the UK Longitudinal Household Survey data, we examine the relationship between the 2004 EU accession as a migration policy change and the housing and locational patterns of EU immigrants (specifically from 10 countries who joined EU in that time period) from a selected set of countries to the UK post-2004. In addition to confirming the importance of the migration policy frameworks through which immigrants are admitted into a country, 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 a number of tests.