In Southampton, a port city on the UK’s south coast, Andrzej Rygielski, a Polish retail manager, filmed adolescents throwing objects at his house. He says it’s not the first time he’s been targeted since he came to the UK in 2005. It is estimated that hate crimes against Poles in Britain have increased tenfold in the last decade.

Andrzej Rygielski described his experience of racism in the UK: “It’s getting worse and worse. This year I’ve been attacked at the beginning of the year in the shop because I’m Polish. People are shouting on the street after me, and also some customers, after realising that I came from Poland, ask me when will I go home.”

Tommy Tomescu is a Romanian dentist who has been working in London since 2010. He says the current political climate has paved the way for scaremongering tactics – blaming Eastern Europeans for taking jobs or exploiting Britain’s welfare system. Earlier this year Tomescu set up the Alliance Against Romanian and Bulgarian Discrimination.

He explained: “In one year, from 2013 to 2014, the number of racial attacks against Eastern Europeans has doubled. In some areas even quadrupled and this has happened because of the political agenda and because of what has been in the media, because the number of Romanians and Bulgarians or Polish didn’t double. So why did this number in racial hate attacks increase?”

Part of the answer could lie in the sheer number of Eastern European migrants who have come to the UK since joining the European Union. For Poland alone, it’s estimated there are more than half a million Poles working and living in Britain.

In Southampton, it is estimated that around one out of ten of the city’s 250,000 residents is Polish. Many people agree that EU migrants have revived and transformed Southampton with new shops, companies and jobs. But others claim they’ve put a strain on public benefits such as housing and health services.

Tomasz Dyl was thirteen years old when he came to Southampton with his parents and sister ten years ago. Today he has his own marketing company and was voted Southampton’s young entrepreneur of the year. He also hosts a weekly radio show in Polish.

For Tomasz, the idea that Eastern Europeans exploit Britain’s benefits system is false: “If you look at the statistics, Eastern European citizens have actually put more money into the government than they’ve taken out. And it’s the migrants from non-EU countries that are actually claiming more benefits. And to a lot of companies, Eastern Europeans are saviours because they’re the ones who are actually doing the work. And if you look at hotels, restaurants, cleaners and everything most of them will be of Eastern European nationality.”

But despite this contribution, EU migration has become a growing concern for a majority of British people. While some see the advantages, others worry Britain’s benefit system is at a breaking point.

In the UK there seems to be a widespread feeling that there is something wrong, and a sense that immigration can no longer be controlled. It’s a message several British tabloids have hammered home over the past two years: that the only way to stop Romanians, Bulgarians or other EU migrants from taking jobs or using Britain’s overburdened welfare system is to leave the European Union.

This message that is political music to UKIP (the United Kingdom Independence Party), which has campaigned on one issue only: leave the EU to regain control.

And Mark Reckless is UKIP’s man of the hour. He UKIP’s second MP after defecting from David Cameron’s Conservative party and being re-elected to the same seat as a UKIP candidate.

He has been criticized for saying an EU exit could lead to the deportation of some EU migrants but claims his comments were taken out of context: “Many of the people here are making a huge contribution to the country and I wouldn’t want to single out any nationality. It’s a question of overall numbers and at the last elections the Conservatives said they would cut immigration from hundreds and thousands a year to tens of thousands a year on a net basis. It’s now gone back up to the levels we saw under labour. But we want to be fair and treat people with a commonwealth heritage, people from outside the EU, on the same basis as people from inside the EU.

Reckless was the guest of honour at a Bruges Group conference – a group lobbying for EU reforms and raising doubts that Cameron can renegotiate the UK’s EU membership with Brussels.

Conservative MP, Mark Pritchard defends Cameron, but concedes that if there is no UK-EU compromise, Britain’s relationship with Brussels could be settled by a UK referendum: “Clearly EU migration brings economic and social benefits to Britain but the majority of people see huge pressures on public services, on housing, on GP surgeries, on hospitals and schools and they’re saying enough is enough. So we need to reconfigure, realign our relationship with Europe. If Brussels rebuffs the prime minister the