By Lucy Mayblin and Ala Sirriyeh (pictured).

The 24^th of March 2021 saw the announcement of the UK’s post-Brexit asylum policy, set out in the New Plan for Immigration. Making 74 references to the word ‘illegal’ or a derivative of this term, the plan centres on ‘criminal smuggling gangs’ who facilitate the cross-border movement of people seeking asylum, particularly across the English Channel. In doing so it advances and formalises a two-tier asylum system, making a distinction between people who travel themselves to places of potential sanctuary, and those who wait in refugee camps, processing and/or transit centres for the possibility of meeting the criteria for resettlement through UNHCR. Under the New Plan, those who arrive ‘spontaneously’ will never be granted permanent leave to remain in the UK and will be denied the right to family reunification here. Those in the privileged group of resettled refugees will gain permanent status. Since most people seeking sanctuary in the UK travel here ‘spontaneously’ and not through resettlement schemes, this plan signals a significant curtailment of the right to asylum in the UK.

Asylum is a topic that has been extensively researched across the social sciences. Yet in the 31 references cited in the New Plan (mostly Home Office documents), there is just one reference to research evidence, a research paper on refugee integration. Since the plan is currently based on claims which are completely unfounded in any body of research evidence, in the remainder of the piece we outline just some of the important findings from social science research on migration which should be considered in assessing and responding to these proposals.

Resettlement represents a tiny proportion of refugee reception globally. Of the 80 million displaced people globally at the end of 2019, 22,800 were resettled in 2020 and only 3,560 were resettled to the UK. Under the new plan, forms of resettlement are set to increase, although the precise numbers are unspecified. The UNHCR assesses and selects people for these resettlement programmes based on the specific and narrow criteria for these programmes.  There is no ‘queue’ system that people can join to apply for asylum. While plans to extend resettlement are welcome, this expansion will make no difference to people who are here in the UK, and arriving, every year. Research has shown that people who have been subject to persecution or displacement rarely have knowledge of any particular national asylum system. Most learn the arbitrary details of access to work, welfare, and asylum itself upon arrival.

The New Plan harbours distinct and deeply troubling echoes of the much critiqued Australian Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) programme and the Australian government’s vilification of people with no option but to travel through irregular means to seek sanctuary. In making smugglers the focus of asylum policy, the UK is inaugurating what Canadian Professor of Migration Alison Mountz calls the death of asylum. There is little difference between people fleeing persecution who make the journey themselves to the UK, or those who wait in a camp with a small chance of resettlement. The two are often, in fact, connected, as men are more likely to go ahead in advance, making perilous journeys, in the hope that safe and legal options will then be opened up for family members who would struggle to travel and survive these perilous routes. And what makes these journeys so dangerous? The lack of safe and legal routes. Britain, and other countries across Europe, North America and Australasia, have gone to huge efforts and massive expense in recent decades to close down access to the right to asylum. Examples of this include paying foreign powers to quarantine refugees outside of Europe, criminalising those who help refugees, and introducing carrier sanctions. 

Research has shown in a wide range of international contexts, including within the EU and the UK, that when government policy closes down safe and legal routes, people are forced to take more perilous journeys. These are not illegal journeys, as claimed by Home Secretary Priti Patel, because under international law one cannot travel illegally if one is seeking asylum. Since people must already be present in the UK or another place of potential sanctuary to apply for asylum there, their only option becomes to pay smugglers for help in crossing borders. At this point criminalising smuggling becomes the focus of asylum policy. In this way, government policy creates and frames the ‘crisis’ which it then claims to solve. Again, there is a body of research which has analysed this phenomenon in the UK and beyond. This policy practice extends to people who are seeking asylum themselves. Arcane maritime laws have been deployed by the UK in order to criminalise irregular Channel crossers who breach sea defences, and therefore deny them sanctuary. For people seeking asylum, there are no safe and legal routes left.

Why is the UK so obsessed with preventing people who are fleeing wars, genocide and human rights abuses from gaining asylum here? On their own terms there is one central reason: their belief that most people seeking asylum today are not actually refugees, but economic migrants seeking to cheat the asylum system. The UK government has tended to justify its highly restrictive asylum policies on the basis that it is open to abuse from ‘bogus, cheating, young men’. It then makes the lives of people who are awaiting a decision on their asylum application as difficult as possible on the basis that this will deter others. Forcing people who are here to live below the poverty line, then, is imagined to sever ‘pull factors’ for others who have not yet arrived. Again, such claims have been closely examined by researchers and there is no evidence to support this idea of economic pull factors, or that deterrence strategies work, they simply cost lives.  

A fresh commitment to resettlement and the use of safe and legal routes is welcome. However, it should not be at the expense of people fleeing persecution who have no alternative but to find sanctuary by travelling to the UK themselves. The unveiling of this policy reveals that lessons are not being learned and that research evidence continues to be disregarded. 

Read Ala Sirriyeh's chapter 'Burying Asylum under the Foundations of Home' from the book The State of Race.

References

Alagna, F. (2021)The EU and the myth of migrant smuggling. London: European Politics and Policy, LSE. The EU and the myth of migrant smuggling | EUROPP (lse.ac.uk)

Freedom from Torture (NA) Poverty. London: Freedom from Torture. Poverty | Freedom from Torture

Grierson, J. (2020) Five 'safe and legal' asylum alternatives to cut Channel crossings, The Guardian (Online), Five 'safe and legal' asylum alternatives to cut Channel crossings | Refugees | The Guardian, accessed 26^th April, 2021.

Home Office (2021) Open Consultation: New Plan for Immigration. London: Home Office. New Plan for Immigration - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Human Rights Watch (NA) Human Rights Watch Commentary On Australia's Temporary Protection Visas For Refugees. New York: Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch Commentary On Australia's Temporary Protection Visas For Refugees (May 13, 2003) (hrw.org)

Mayblin, L. and James, P. (2016) Is access to the labour market a pull factor for asylum seekers?. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. labour-market-access-for-asylum-seekers_short1.pdf (wordpress.com)

Mountz, A. (2020) The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. The Death of Asylum — University of Minnesota Press (umn.edu)

Sirriyeh, A. (2020) Comment: the Channel “crisis” and the politics of compassion. Free Movement blog. Comment: the Channel "crisis" and the politics of compassion | Free Movement

UNHCR (2021) What is Resettlement? London: UNHCR. UNHCR - Resettlement

UNHCR (2021) Asylum in the UK. London: UNHCR. UNHCR - Asylum in the UK