Without young immigrants and their higher birth rates there simply won't be enough tax revenue to cover future social obligations. We know what this game looks like: Japan. A country looking at a steady and certain decline in quality of life. This is what the UK is going to be like.
The EU is absolutely going to be dominant in the future. Collectively it has an economy that is more varied and flexible and the single market is invaluable. As a startup or prospective exporter being able to try things out in your local market (of 500 million people no less) is the reason the US is so successful.
African demographic projections which shows Africa's population growth slowly dropping? Coupled with economic projections which shows most African economies growing at far faster rates than Europe? With some African countries, like Nigeria, likely to overtake the UK in total GDP (not per capita) over the next 20-30 years? Largely as a result of massively improved stability and fewer wars over the last decade.
Africa has plenty of challenges, but they're mostly headed the right way. And they're also slowly but steadily moving towards a far more ambitious union project than the EU, with several of the African Union pillars (regional closer unions like ECOWAS serves as "first stage" integration) hard at work at monetary unions and extensive integration.
Of course things can change - nobody expected Syria to blow up the way it did and more than we expected Yugoslavia to collapse as violently as it did.
But at the moment, countries like Nigeria are seeing graduates etc. returning in droves from the UK because the opportunities there are immense, cost of living low (though housing prices in parts of places like Lagos can rival London) and growth at levels you can't hope for in the UK.
http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_proj_continent.aspx
Now if it is matched by an unprecedented growth, it may turn out OK. But if I was a young african male, I would try my luck in Europe.
> But if I was a young african male, I would try my luck in Europe.
If you were a young African male with the means of getting to Europe, there's at least half a dozen African countries where your economic prospects over the next 20-30 years would likely outstrip going to Europe unless you are in a tiny minority with skills that are in very high demand in Europe.
As it stands, they'd need to see a total catastrophic collapse of the economy of most of the African continent, with no subsequent recovery, for economic growth to not outpace population growth over the next few decades.
I'm sure you can't extrapolate it and assume it will stay the same for the next 30 years. But you can make reasonably educated estimates assuming that the average change in velocity will be all that extreme, given that large part of these amounts are based on income from relatively stable industries with well understood risk profiles.
Largely the development of Africa at present boils down to whether or not we see further major wars disrupt the progress. If we do, then, yes, things may go the wrong way. If not, it will take unprecedented crises to prevent Africa from continuing to see massive growth.
I'd wager that the OP hit the nail on the head here. There are many large Pakistani communities in England in areas such as the Midlands, East London and Bradford that do not inter-marry, socialise or integrate outside their own culture, and when after two or three generations this remains unchanged the perception to the locals is that the cohesion of their communities have taken a real turn for the worse.
The EU's inability to manage middle eastern migrants in a controlled way, along with the belief that most will eventually hold EU passports and speak rudimentary English I think were major deciding factors in those communities, communities that have had demographic shifts not seen in Scotland and Northern Ireland & whose concerns are shut out and branded racist and xenophobic by both the media and the left.
Socialism in Europe died in the '90s. What we have now are right-wing neoliberal elites trashing the place that social-democrats built in the '70s and '80s.
Les députés européens socialistes français estiment que la victoire annoncée du Brexit est "l'échec d'une Europe exclusivement dédiée au marché intérieur"
Translation: the French socialist members of European parliament think that the victory of Brexit is the "failure of a Europe solely dedicated to free trade".
Free trade is the only thing UKIP or the euro-sceptic tories want to keep from the EU. There is a fundamental cultural gap between the UK and Continental Europe countries.
Long term the EU is going nowhere, it is dominated by socialist countries that will go the way of Argentina, a slow but steady decline (well under way). And the migrant crisis, which is likely only at its beginning (look at african demographic projections), combined with Brexit and the rise of populism all over Europe, will likely put such a strain on the EU that I think its days are numbered.
So on the long run, I think the UK has probably made a wise choice.