Migration has been a critical flashpoint in UK politics in recent years. In the Brexit referendum, sovereignty in migration policy was one of the Leave campaign’s driving arguments. With stress on public services like education, the NHS or council housing, the Conservative government has sought to reduce immigration to ‘sustainable’ levels, believing that this is necessary to preserve a high quality of life for British citizens.
Much of the focus has been on ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in small boats or lorries across the Channel. The terminology of the ‘illegal’ here matters, as it may criminalise refugees or economic migrants desperate for better living standards. The government frames immigration as a law and order issue to justify policies like detention of migrants in austere conditions and deportations. It claims to be acting out of concern for the migrants, who are painted as victims of wicked people smugglers. It is indeed a fact that migrants die en route by drowning in the sea or suffocation in lorries, such as 39 Vietnamese migrants appallingly discovered dead in one in 2019. Yet supporters of a more liberal migration policy contend that stricter border patrols have not discouraged migrants from making the often-deadly journey and the solution is instead to open up safe, regular means of reaching the UK for more.
In an eminently controversial proposal to remove irregular migrants and deter them in the future, the government has endeavoured to deport them via flights to Rwanda. This scheme, a flagship target for former Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, has recently been rejected by the Supreme Court. This was on the basis that the scheme does not adequately protect refugees from being returned to their home countries, contravening the European Convention of Human Rights. It has also been denounced as cruel for sending migrants extremely far from their desired destination against their will; for being colonialist in the sense that the UK is exporting its problem to another country; and as grossly expensive to the taxpayer. Sadly, such ‘hostile environment’ policies are not contained within the UK’s shores; repellence of migrants is ubiquitous globally. For instance, take the numerous documented instances of illegal refoulement (pushbacks) by the Greek coastguard in the Aegean Sea and police along the land border with Turkey.
The prospects of those seeking to reach the UK vary according to their home country and there have been cries of hypocrisy or preferential treatment for some countries. Migrants from Ukraine fleeing the Russian invasion or those who left Hong Kong after the CCP’s repression of democracy are able to access special fast-track schemes. The UK’s open-armed embrace of Ukrainian refugees in contrast to those from other conflicts such as the Syrian or Sudanese civil wars is viewed by some as proof of selective solidarity, showing concern only for white Europeans. Hong Kong is entangled with the legacy of the British Empire, with the territory only being returned to China in 1997. I interpret the UK’s sense of moral obligation to its people as a kind of colonial nostalgia, or as a strategic attempt to present the UK as a global champion of democracy and liberty.
Regardless of which side of the debate one sits on, migration remains firmly in the limelight of the UK’s political scene. With the sacking of Home Secretary Suella Braverman and the determination of the government to persist with the Rwanda scheme despite the court verdict, it is a dynamic topic which holds much interest for geography.
Written by Yiannis Katsos, Geography, St. John’s College.