A Scoping Review of UK Immigration and Asylum Laws: The Endless Cycle of ‘Migration Fix’

Abstract

Historically, the number of United Kingdom (UK) emigrants has exceeded the number of immigrants, but this trend began to change in the early 1970s. The UK government has been enforcing strict immigration controls to reduce the number of immigrants, especially asylum seekers. The country even left the European Union to better control its borders and consider new arrivals based on their skills. However, despite tighter immigration policies, long-term international migration to the UK has continued to grow. The ongoing, and to some extent gendered and racialised, migration fix has not provided a sustainable solution for the country. Instead, it has increased the vulnerability and anxiety of refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants. Informed by a scoping review and the concept migration fix, this article examines UK immigration policies since World War II. This article is important for understanding the migration fix in UK immigration and asylum policies and their effects on asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants.

1. Introduction

The United Kingdom (UK) is an island country composed of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It is located in Northern Europe and has a population of about 69.3 million people (Office for National Statistics 2025). Since the Second World War, the UK has introduced several policies, first to encourage people to migrate to the UK, and later to restrict the number of people who migrate to the country (Hampshire County Council 2010). After the end of the Second World War, like many European countries, the UK was engaged in reconstructing the country and boosting its economic development. Therefore, it followed a loose immigration policy that could attract people for the reconstruction and other sectors of the economy, such as the National Health Service (NHS) and high-tech industries (Freeman 1978; Geddes 2003).

Conversely, the decade from 1962 to 1971 marked a defining shift in the legal framework that restricted the inflow of immigrants from various countries, including Commonwealth countries and British colonies (Hatton and Price 1999). Since the 1990s, with the influx of refugees fleeing conflicts in the Balkans and other parts of the world, UK immigration laws have incorporated asylum issues. Informed by a scoping review and the concept of liquid modernity, this article examines UK immigration policies since the Second World War (WWII), a period during which immigration from abroad grew steadily (Karpf 2002; Migration Watch UK 2014). This article mainly focuses on immigration policies governing international migrants, especially refugees and asylum seekers.

This article is guided by two overarching research questions: (1) How have the UK immigration policies changed since WWII? (2) What is the impact of UK immigration policies on migrants, especially refugees and asylum seekers? The article is significant for understanding the changes in UK immigration policies that affect millions of people within and outside of the country. In so doing, it advances people’s knowledge and understanding of the vulnerabilities of asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants and drives policy and practical improvements.

2. Migration in the UK: From Emigration to Immigration

People have been migrating from and to the UK for centuries. According to Berkeley et al. (2006), historically, the number of UK emigrants exceeded the number of immigrants. Between 1870 and 1913, the annual net emigration of British citizens was 131,000 (Hatton and Price 1999). This amounted to a net loss of 5.6 million people over the years, reducing the population by 16 percent less than it would have been (Hatton and Price 1999; Portes 2015). Hatton and Price (1999) further stated that most of the people were migrating to the United States, Canada, Australia, and various British colonies. The UK was one of the major colonial powers that had controlled significant parts of the world. After the Second World War, the UK received many migrants from Eastern European countries (see also Eade 2014), but this did not change the country’s net emigration until the 1970s (Hampshire County Council 2010; Office for National Statistics 2016).

Since the beginning of the 1970s, the migration trend in the UK has reversed for four reasons. First, the massive influx of British citizens to the above-stated destinations declined. By the end of the 1940s, Canada and Australia ended some of their preferential treatment to British immigrants (Hatton and Price 1999). For instance, British immigrants were not able to obtain free access to Canada after 1948. Moreover, in the 1960s, most of the British colonies gained independence, and the remaining ones began to revolt, making them unsafe for British citizens (Darwin 2011). Therefore, these situations decreased the movement of British migrants to their colonies.

Second, many people started to come to the UK, mainly from former British colonies and Commonwealth countries (Hampshire County Council 2010; Office for National Statistics 2016) as well as from Europe (Hatton and Price 1999). Darwin (2011) indicated that this was part of the British imperial legacy, aimed at promoting inclusive imperial citizenship for the peoples of the British Empire. However, as stated above, the UK openly discriminated against Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) immigrants, especially in the 1960s (Dummett 2001). In line with this, Osman (2013) argued that, although immigrants are allowed to live in the UK, they are still blamed for everything that goes wrong in the country. Nevertheless, all these challenges and immigration restrictions have not stopped the inflow of migrants to the country.

Third, the enlargement of the European Union (EU) in 2004 added ten countries to the group, allowing their citizens to live and work in the UK. This led to a large influx of immigrants from these countries, especially Poland, into the UK (Somerville et al. 2009). In 2023, the number of foreign nationals living in the UK exceeded six million, while the number of people born overseas reached 9.6 million (Kirk-Wade 2025b). This is a considerable increase compared to previous years, as the UK had about 3.8 million people born overseas in 1993 and 8.7 million in 2015 (Rienzo and Vargas-Silva 2017). Simultaneously, the number of EU immigrants to the UK increased from 0.9 million in 1995 to 3.3 million in 2015 (Wadsworth et al. 2016) and 3.4 million in 2021 (Kirk-Wade 2025b). Although Brexit has slowed their increase (The Migration Observatory 2025), EU immigrants still account for about 35 percent of the total immigrants living in the UK.

Fourth, refugees also contributed to the increasing number of migrants in the UK. The number of asylum applications in the UK has increased significantly since the beginning of the 1980s (Kirk-Wade 2025a). According to the Home Office (2018), in 1979, the UK had only 1563 asylum applications. Soon after this, the number increased significantly, reaching its peak in 2002 with 103,081 applications. Then, the number of asylum seekers decreased sharply, reaching its two-decade low point of 22,644 applications in 2010, before climbing again to reach 39,968 in 2015 (Home Office 2018) and back to about 100,000 in 2024 (Home Office 2025c). The 2018 Home Office report indicated that between 1979 and 2017, the UK received 1,351,846 asylum applications, of which 373,198 were approved, 877,802 were refused, 72,729 were withdrawn, and the remaining were still pending (Home Office 2018).

As discussed below, the UK government has been implementing tight immigration controls to reduce the number of immigrants, in general, and asylum seekers in particular. The country even left the EU to control its borders and consider new arrivals based on their skills (Walker 2021). However, despite the tightening immigration policies, long-term international migration to the UK has been increasing.

3. Theoretical Frameworks: Migration Fix

This article is informed by the concept of ‘migration fix’, which was developed from the concept of the ‘spatial fix’. In 1981, David Harvey developed the concept of spatial fix (Harvey 1981) to “make sense of the ways in which global capitalism deploys various forms of ‘geographical expansion and geographical restructuring’ to manage its inner contradictions” (Schmid and Bird 2025, p. 422). One of the spatial fixes was the mass movement of workers in the form of dispersing labour surpluses or importing cheap labour (Harvey 1981; Schmid and Bird 2025). This was further developed into the ‘migration fix’—which can be defined as the ability of states to employ various strategies of control to regulate the mobility and rights of populations, ranging from legal classification of migrants to everyday coercive practices (Bird and Schmid 2023; Schmid and Bird 2025).

In line with the spatial fix, migration fix through bordering and containment practices plays an essential role in managing internal contradictions and extracting profits (Bird and Schmid 2023). Countries loosen their immigration laws when they need low-skilled labour in agriculture, caring, construction, cleaning, and logistics. For example, in 2020, many European countries, such as Germany and Italy, considered temporarily amending their labour laws to allow asylum seekers to work in order to ease the severe labour shortage in agriculture during the COVID-19 pandemic (InfoMigrants 2020). By contrast, Western countries impose harsh immigration controls and cast ‘low-skilled’ immigrants as a burden on the state (Home Office 2021, 2025d), especially when they use immigration as a political tool to attract voters (Choonara 2025; Newton 2025). Instead, they enact an immigration policy that attracts high-skilled immigrants through mechanisms such as the UK’s points-based system (Gower 2018).

In many cases, the migration fix is used as a short-term solution to various crises and social tensions (Schmid and Bird 2025), especially in response to tabloid media and far-right politics. This pattern is evident in many countries, especially economically developed Western countries like the UK. For instance, the UK has introduced a points-based immigration system to regulate low-skilled and low-wage labour migration into the country (Gower 2018; Home Office 2020b). This has been a continuous trend across many UK governments, driven by the aim of staying in power. Successive UK governments not only devised ways to attract highly skilled migrants, but also established a ‘securitised and racialised bordering’, as a migration fix, to control asylum seekers and what they call ‘illegal migrants’. This suggests that the migration fix is “not a singular and overarching plan but rather as a multiplicity of short-term solutions– a series of tentative migration fixes, rather than a singular, stable migration fix” (Schmid and Bird 2025, p. 423).

In addition to border regulation, access to welfare provision and the labour market are used as migration fixes (Schmid and Bird 2025). Using regional or bilateral agreements, such as the Dublin Regulation, countries control the movement and rights of people. Furthermore, asylum seekers receive a limited allowance of £49.18 per person per week to cover essential needs such as food and clothing (Gower 2021); they are not permitted to work for at least the first twelve months (Gower et al. 2024). This indicates that a migration fix sometimes adopts class-based and racialised policies that grant mobility and rights to some migrants, whereas denying them to others through strict border regimes and selective systems and regulations (Schmid and Bird 2025).

The rationale for the migration fix is “not purely economic” (Bird and Schmid 2023, p. 1244). The concept of the migration fix is shaped by factors such as nationality, ethnicity, and gender (Bird and Schmid 2023). A common feature is that countries often grant preferential immigration treatment to highly talented and wealthy individuals, who are expected to contribute to the social and economic development of their destination countries. Schmid and Bird (2025) further suggest that race is a key factor in the construction and management of borders and other institutions that regulate mobility, welfare, and employment. Research has consistently evidenced that BAME immigrants are more likely to face tighter immigration controls and experience racism and discrimination than their white counterparts (Dummett 2001; Scully 2015; Tsegay 2020).

4. Methodology

This article is based on a scoping review of the literature and UK immigration laws to identify and synthesise the existing or emerging literature on the country’s immigration policies and conditions. The article follows Mak and Thomas’s (2022) five steps of conducting a scoping review: identifying the research question; identifying relevant studies; selecting studies to be included in the review; charting the data; and collecting, summarising, and reporting the results.

Identifying the research question and relevant studies: The two research questions were used to identify relevant policy changes and literature on the topic: (1) How have UK immigration policies changed since the end of WWII? (2) What is the impact of UK immigration policies on migrants? Accordingly, I searched UK immigration laws and relevant articles on UK government websites, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Google by using four key words: “UK AND immigration policy” OR “UK AND settlement rules” OR “UK AND asylum policy” OR “UK AND migration”.

Selecting and charting the studies to be included in the review: The identified documents were carefully selected based on the research questions. Given the studies’ differences, which limit uniform data charting, four main categories were used to chart the studies: author’s name, year of publication, and main content/results. UK immigration policies adopted after the end of WWII (1945) were selected for the article; whereas those set before WWII were excluded. Additionally, the immigration policies and studies supporting them were charted separately, as the first are all published by the UK government.

Collating, summarising, and reporting the results: Finally, the data were collated, summarised, and reported through content analysis, which allows for the development of a comprehensive and meaningful data analysis (Bengtsson 2016; Vaismoradi et al. 2013). In particular, the data analysis was informed by Bengtsson’s (2016) four stages of content analysis: decontextualisation (coding), recontextualisation (comparing with the original data), categorisation (theming), and compilation (drawing realistic conclusions). Accordingly, the data were coded and categorised chronologically to provide a comprehensive and logical analysis and draw realistic conclusions.

5. UK Immigration Policies

5.1. 1948 to 1990: From Dual Citizenship to Exclusion

In 1948, the UK passed the British Nationality Act that came into force in January 1949. This Act granted dual status to all citizens of Commonwealth countries, making them ‘Citizens of the UK and Colonies’ (British Nationality Act 1948, p. 6). It also gave people from British colonies and independent Commonwealth countries the possibility of entering the UK without any immigration control, as well as of working and settling for as long as they wished. Soon after, some British people, including the ruling class, started to express racist attitudes, especially towards non-white immigrants, to oppose this unrestricted movement of migrants (Dummett 2001). For example, in the 1960s, it was common to see advertisements for accommodation to bear the words ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ (Scully 2015, p. 138). This was a sign that non-white immigrants were not welcome and a call for changes to the 1948 Act, which allowed an inflow of immigrants.

Because of widespread opposition to immigration, the UK government passed various consecutive laws to control the flow of immigrants. In July 1962, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came into effect, limiting the rights of Commonwealth citizens to enter the UK without being subject to immigration control. The Act tightened immigration controls, allowing entry to the UK only with a voucher. This shows that the UK’s immigration controls have partly focused on the acquisition of higher education qualifications or employment. Accordingly, a voucher was issued to those who had pre-arranged employment, had special skills, or were needed for labour. Freeman (1978) argued that the voucher system was intended to slow the immigration of non-White people to the UK. Similarly, Hayter (2016) noted that the voucher system was designed to discriminate against people of colour through the skill scheme because the UK government anticipated that White people would be the majority with the necessary skills. Nonetheless, as the Act allowed spouses and children of primary migrants, a significant number of people entered the UK through family unification (Hatton and Price 1999). This, in fact, made the Act less effective than expected.

The year 1968 was marked by a new immigration act. In addition, Kenya’s Africanisation policy and Enoch Powell’s address were significant features of the year. In February 1968, the UK parliament passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 to increase control over citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies. The Act was initiated at a time when about 200,000 Kenyan Asians were fleeing Kenya due to its ‘Africanisation policy’. Through this policy, the Kenyan government stopped renewing the work permits of Asians and discharged them from the civil service, restricting them to specific sectors of the economy (Hansen 2000). The fleeing Kenyan Asians hoped to enter the UK and reside there. However, under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, entry to the UK was only allowed for people born in the UK or for those with at least one parent or grandparent born in the UK. Moreover, the Act tightened the immigration control on people entering through the voucher system. It also abolished the ‘domestic labour’ category from the system (Hatton and Price 1999).

Nonetheless, the new changes were not enough for many, especially those aligned to the Conservative Party. For example, after the introduction of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, Enoch Powell, a British politician and Conservative Member of Parliament, attacked the UK’s immigration policy, saying that the UK had to be mad to allow in 50,000 dependents of immigrants each year (Powell 1968). In his address, commonly known as the Rivers of Blood Speech, Powell further stated, ‘In this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the White man’. Clearly, this indicates that some UK politicians were still dissatisfied with the 1968 immigration policy. Hence, strengthening immigration policy against Commonwealth immigrants became the focus of the 1970s election campaign, which the Conservative government won and soon initiated a new immigration act (Freeman 1978).

Soon after its election victory, the Conservative government enacted the Immigration Act (1971), and it came into force in 1973 (Freeman 1978). Hatton and Price (1999, p. 12) argued that the Act was ‘symbolic’ for two reasons: ending unrestricted migration to the UK, and its timing. It came into effect on 1 January 1973, the same day that the UK joined the European Community. Furthermore, Dummett (2001, p. 105) noted that the immigration law was a ‘blatantly racist concept of patriality’. According to the Immigration Act (1971), patrial Commonwealth citizens were given the right of abode in the UK. By mid-1971, there were about 1.5 million BAME people in the UK, representing about 2.5 percent of the country’s population (Freeman 1978). About half of these people were born in Britain (Freeman 1978). The Immigration Act (1971) became the cornerstone of subsequent immigration laws, focusing on restricting the number of immigrants to the UK. In 1988, the UK introduced the Immigration Act (1988). However, the Immigration Act (1988) did not change the basic principles of the Immigration Act (1971); instead, it made detailed amendments to several provisions. For instance, the Immigration Act (1988) restricted entry clearance and the issue of certificates of the right of abode for polygamous marriages (see Immigration Act 1988).

5.2. 1991 to 2000: Towards a Fairer, Faster and Firmer Approach

The UK was one of the first countries to sign the 1951 Refugee Convention (Home Office 1998). The convention defines the term ‘refugee’ and outlines the rights of displaced people and countries’ obligations to protect them (United Nations 1950). The term ‘refugee’ does not apply to every international migrant. Refugees are forced to flee their country due to a threat of persecution and lack of protection (Tsegay 2023). In contrast, migrants may leave their country for employment, study, or family reunification, and continue to enjoy the protection of their government (UNHCR 2011). The number of asylum seekers in the UK increased from 3998 in 1988 to 44,840 in 1991 (Kirk-Wade 2025a). As a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the UK established various procedures to address the large number of asylum seekers. In particular, it incorporated immigration and asylum laws to reject unfounded asylum claims (Fiddick 1999). In the 1990s, the UK parliament passed three asylum and immigration acts.

The UK introduced the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act in 1993. As its name indicates, the Act incorporated asylum and immigration laws. It introduced the fingerprinting of all asylum seekers to control multiple applications. It also included housing and financial provisions for asylum seekers. In addition, the 1993 Act ensured the right to appeal for those whose asylum applications are refused. In 1996, the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 amended and supplemented the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993. The 1996 Act put restrictions on the employment of people without valid immigration documents. Moreover, it created offences for employing people without permission to live and work in the UK and for using deception to obtain leave to remain in the country.

As shown above, the 1993 and 1996 Acts brought many new measures. However, they were not fully successful in addressing the issues faced by asylum seekers, as the number of asylum applications increased while decision-making was slow (Stevens 2001). In July 1998, the UK government presented a white paper entitled ‘Fairer, faster and firmer- A modern approach to immigration and asylum’ to parliament. The paper aimed to enable quick passage through immigration control for those who deserve it, and to quickly and firmly deal with those who are not entitled to enter or remain in the UK (Home Office 1998). The target of the white paper was mainly to control illegal migrants and asylum seekers by separating them from the local communities and increasing the use of detention (Malloch and Stanley 2005).

Following the 1998 white paper, the UK issued the Immigration and Asylum Act (1999). The 1999 Act restricted marriage for immigration purposes and set a target of processing asylum applications within six months. It also replaced welfare benefits for asylum seekers with a voucher system in order to discourage economic migrants. Furthermore, the Immigration and Asylum Act (1999) allowed for a no-choice basis provision of housing and, thus, led to the dispersion of asylum seekers around the UK. However, the Home Office was not able to process all asylum applications within six months, and the dispersal process increased the anxiety and vulnerability of asylum seekers by removing their social networks (Cuibus et al. 2024; Tsegay 2022).

5.3. 2001 to 2020: Towards a Skill-Based Immigration

In continuation of previous regulations, the UK passed several immigration and asylum acts in the first two decades of the 21st century. There were five consecutive acts in the first decade of the century, and four new acts were added in the second decade. They are:

• Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act (2002)
• Asylum and Immigration Act 2004
• Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act (2006)
• UK Borders Act 2007
• Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009
• Immigration Act (2014)
• Immigration Act (2016)
• The Immigration, Nationality and Asylum (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
• Immigration and Social Security Co-Ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020

The Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act (2002) focused on the citizenship ceremony of immigrants. It also specified the restrictions and removal of rejected asylum applicants. The Act required ‘sufficient knowledge about life in the United Kingdom’ for naturalisation and, hence, placed two examinations for immigrants: the English test and citizenship exam (Nationality, Immigration, and Asylum Act 2002, pp. 1–2). Furthermore, the Asylum and Immigration Act 2004 presented changes to asylum law. It introduced a single appeal form and limited access to refused asylum applicants. In addition, entering the UK without travel documents and assisting unlawful immigration became offences.

The Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act (2006) established a five-tier points-based system for granting entry visas to the UK, catering for high-skilled migrants, sponsored skilled workers, low-skilled workers, temporary workers, and students (Gower 2018). The Act also initiated the sharing of information between immigration, police, and revenue and customs departments (see Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006). Subsequently, the UK Borders Act 2007 permitted immigration officers to detain individuals for up to three hours and search for anything that might be used for escaping or causing physical injury to anyone, including themselves. The 2007 Act also introduced a biometric immigration document for non-European Union migrants. In February 2008, a new civil penalty scheme came into force to penalise and imprison employers who knowingly employ illegal workers (Anderson 2010). The Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 amended the naturalisation requirements for people from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), creating a new path to citizenship, such as allowing voluntary community service to reduce the years of residence required before eligibility for naturalisation. This helped refugees and spouses of migrants already in the UK to have their points evaluated based on “the basis of their continuing family relationship or protection needs” (BBC 2009).

In May 2014, the Immigration Act (2014) was approved, aiming to ensure that the UK immigration system is ‘fairer to British citizens and legitimate migrants and tougher on those with no right to be here’ (Home Office 2014). The Act prohibited property owners from renting houses to individuals who were disqualified by immigration status or who did not have leave to enter or remain in the UK. It also prevented illegal immigrants from obtaining bank accounts and driving licences, and authorised the Secretary of State to remove such individuals from the UK. Additionally, the Immigration Act (2014) empowered the Secretary of State to revoke naturalised citizenship from individuals considered ‘prejudicial’ to the UK’s vital interests. The Immigration Act (2014) was heavily criticised by different groups as unfair and discriminatory (Rooney 2014). Nonetheless, the Immigration Act (2016) strengthened the withdrawal of access to services from illegal immigrants and made provision regarding English language requirements for public sector workers. For example, the Act stipulated, “A public authority must ensure that each person who works for the public authority in a customer-facing role speaks fluent English” (Immigration Act 2016, p. 65).

The Immigration, Nationality and Asylum (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 were designed primarily to ensure the UK addresses the immigration issues that might arise after the country leaves the European Union (EU). The UK withdrew from the EU (commonly known as Brexit) in January 2020 after the leave campaign won a majority vote (52%) in a referendum (Hobolt et al. 2022). The 2019 regulation revoked some EU asylum laws, such as the ‘Dublin III regulation and the Eurodac regulation, as the UK would be outside the EU asylum acquis (UK Parliament 2019). Under the Dublin Regulation, an asylum seeker must seek asylum in the first safe country they arrive in, while the Eurodac Regulation covers the use and operation of the Eurodac biometric database for comparing and identifying illegally crossing and staying migrants (UK Parliament 2019).

Subsequently, the UK adopted the Immigration and Social Security Co-Ordination (EU Withdrawal) Act 2020, ending the free movement of people under EU law and bringing EU citizens under UK immigration control (Home Office 2020a). Instead, the UK focused on a firmer and skills-based immigration system, regardless of a person’s country of origin. This reinforces the policy document issued in February 2020 regarding the country’s Points-Based Immigration System, which aims to attract high-skilled workers (Home Office 2020b). However, Brexit did not stop the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK, as many politicians had promised. It further complicated the UK asylum system, as many asylum seekers began arriving in the UK by crossing the English Channel, knowing that the UK could not apply the Dublin or Eurodac regulations. Hence, alongside tabloid media depictions of migrants as unwelcome guests and far-right protests (Choonara 2025; Newton 2025; Tsegay 2020), the influx of asylum seekers through the English Channel prompted the UK government to implement stricter asylum policies.

5.4. 2021 to 2025: Empowering the Gatekeepers

From 2022 to 2025, the UK published numerous immigration acts and policy papers. However, with the change of government, some of the acts ended after the Labour government won the July 2024 election.

• Nationality and Borders Act 2022
• Illegal Migration Act 2023
• Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024)
• The Illegal Migration Act 2023 (Amendment) Regulations (2024)
• Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2025

According to the Home Office (2021), the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 was aimed at making the system fairer and more effective by protecting those who need asylum and removing those who do not have the right to be in the country. The act created a temporary protection status (30 months) for an inadmissible person who cannot be removed to another country, and new immigration offences and penalties for entering the UK without a valid entry clearance and knowingly staying in the country beyond their time limit. The bill also targeted preventing channel crossings through criminal trafficking networks. The UK government noted that there could be a connection between ‘criminal’ networks that smuggle people (asylum seekers) and engage in other illicit activities such as drug and firearms trading. Hence, the bill was meant to disrupt criminal networks, while protecting ‘illegal’ migrants who, according to the UK government, could put ‘unsustainable pressures on public services’ (Home Office 2021).

Not quite different from the previous bill, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 aims to remove ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in the UK via small boat crossings. It prevents these migrants from accessing the UK’s modern slavery protections and proposes their detention and deportation to their home country or a safe third country, such as Rwanda (Home Office 2023). The act gave the Home Office and the Home Secretary the power to detain and remove, respectively, what they called ‘illegal’ immigrants (Donald and Grogan 2023). It was also followed by the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024), which was set to deport “unlawful migration, and in particular migration by unsafe and illegal routes” to Rwanda (p. 1). Although these two acts exacerbated the UK’s hostile environment for asylum seekers (Parker and Cornell 2024), their main provisions were ended by the new Labour government. Soon after its election, the Labour government enacted the Illegal Migration Act 2023 (Amendment) Regulations (2024), lifting the ban on processing asylum claims imposed by the Illegal Migration Act 2023.

However, the Labour government has introduced new legislation to strengthen the UK border and reduce the number of asylum seekers entering the country. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill 2025 was established to tackle irregular migration and disrupt organised crime (including organised immigration crime) through data-sharing arrangements and the establishment of the Border Security Command (Home Office 2025b). The bill also repeals the provisions of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024). Although the Labour government noted that the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024) was costly and ineffective due to questions of its legality and human rights aspects, the new bill created additional criminal offences. It also expanded law enforcement’s detention and other powers, including the seizure of migrants’ phones and electronic devices.

The Labour government did not stop with this bill, especially after the anti-migrant far-right protest and the rise of the Reform Party, a right-wing political party, as a strong future contender, mainly due to its anti-migrant policy (Choonara 2025; Newton 2025). A new policy paper titled “Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy” was announced and presented to parliament by the Home Office in November 2025 (Home Office 2025d). Inspired by Denmark’s model (see Schwörer 2025), the policy paper aimed not only at preventing ‘illegal’ asylum seekers and removing those without a legal right to remain in the UK but also at increasing the period for indefinite leave to remain for refugees from five to ten or more years, depending on individual routes into the UK, economic contribution, crime history, and universal credit claims (McKinney and Gower 2025). The policy paper also proposed a 2.5-year temporary protection for refugees, which can be extended as needed. Additionally, in September 2025, the UK government temporarily suspended all new family reunion applications (Home Office 2025a), implying that the ongoing family reunion policy will be affected by the new immigration rule (see Home Office 2025d).

6. Discussion

Since the end of WWII, the UK has hosted millions of migrants from around the world. With the rise in the number of immigrants, especially asylum seekers from the Global South, successive UK governments argued that the situation could have social and economic impacts on the country, putting pressure on institutions such as the NHS (Home Office 2021). As a result, they enacted strict immigration laws to ensure careful, selective admission of people into the country. However, the UK’s endless search for a migration fix has not yielded the required results, while exacerbating the vulnerability of many refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants. This was evident as early as the 1960s, with signs on accommodation reading ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’ (Scully 2015, p. 138) and Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood Speech (Powell 1968). Both cases suggest that the UK has long been in a migration fix (Bird and Schmid 2023) in which race has been a significant factor in welcoming immigrants or treating them as uninvited guests (Tsegay 2020; Xuereb 2023).

Most of the UK’s immigration and asylum laws aimed to prevent ‘illegal’ immigrants, deport overstayers, and, to some extent, support those qualified to stay. For example, the Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act of 1993 provided housing and financial support for asylum seekers and gave rejected asylum seekers the right to appeal. However, three years later, the UK government passed the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996, which criminalised living or working in the UK without permission. These types of changes have been common over the past sixty years, especially with shifting governments, as migration has been used as a political tool. After Brexit, the UK found itself in a difficult position since it could no longer apply the Dublin Regulation. As a result, the promise of Brexit as a means of controlling immigration became unrealistic, leading the government to continually search for a new migration solution. This indicates that the migration fix is a temporary solution, primarily influenced by social and political factors (Bird and Schmid 2023; Schmid and Bird 2025). As Choonara (2025) and Newton (2025) noted, pressure from tabloid media, far-right protests, and the rise of the Reform Party worsened the situation.

The conservative government, near the end of its term, enacted the Illegal Migration Act 2023 and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024), both aimed at removing ‘illegal’ migrants arriving in the UK via small boat crossings. The removal or deportation to Rwanda was mainly influenced by race and gender, two significant factors in migration fix (Bird and Schmid 2023; Schmid and Bird 2025). For example, the Home Office initially targeted male migrants for the first deportation flights to Rwanda (Taylor 2023), an action that might be influenced by a few male asylum seekers’ anti-social behaviour, such as rape and harassment of women (UK Parliament 2025). Race and nationality are also influential factors in visa and immigration decision-making processes, affecting applicants from the Global South, especially those from BAME groups (Dummett 2001; Scully 2015; Tsegay 2020).

Fisher (2025) pointed out that the UK provides preferential treatment for work permits and resettlement support to refugees from Ukraine compared to those from other regions, such as the Middle East and Africa. Similarly, the study by Xuereb (2023) showed that Britons are more likely to support Ukrainian refugees than Syrian or Somali ones. It is important to note that both Ukrainian and Syrian refugees left their countries to escape war. However, as Xuereb (2023, p. 11) stated, “not all asylum seekers are equal, and White European asylum seekers are seen in a more positive or kinder light than darker-skinned ones from outside Europe.” This extends beyond the racialisation of border management to regulate mobility and impacts migrants’ welfare and employment in their host countries (Schmid and Bird 2025).

As noted earlier, the new Labour government repealed the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act (2024) but has proposed another strict migration policy in the “Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy” (Home Office 2025d). This policy document is perhaps the worst version of the UK’s Rwanda deportation plan, reflecting the country’s most “hostile environment approach to asylum seekers for some time” (Parker and Cornell 2024, p. 3). It also indicates that a migration fix cannot be a lasting solution but instead a short-term fix (Schmid and Bird 2025). One clear issue is that the immigration laws create panic, anxiety, and psychological distress among refugees and asylum seekers, who are already vulnerable populations (Tsegay 2022, 2023).

Finally, the one consistent thing across the UK immigration policies is the need to attract high-skilled immigrants through the voucher system (Hayter 2016) and the UK’s points-based immigration system (Gower 2018; Home Office 2020b). Additionally, the UK, through the graduate route, global talent, and other visa programmes, is attempting to attract high-skilled immigrants who could contribute to the country’s economy, communities, and public services while improving their lives (Gower 2018; Home Office 2020b); but this may drain human capital from many countries, especially those in the Global South (Tsegay 2020). Most importantly, as shown above, the migration fix is not “purely economic” but a temporary solution to a country’s political and social phenomenon (Bird and Schmid 2023, p. 1244). Studies also indicate that even high-skilled immigrants face racism, xenophobia, and discrimination in their host countries (Bauman 1996, 2011; Tsegay 2020).

7. Conclusions

This article reviews UK immigration policies since the end of WWII and analyses their impact on asylum seekers and other immigrants. Overall, the UK immigration policies have three main features.

First, since the 1960s, the UK has used various Acts to tighten immigration controls. As shown above, these Acts aim to discourage illegal migrants from coming to the UK or to push them to leave the country voluntarily. The UK is working to restrict asylum and low-skilled immigration by toughening visa requirements, making refugee status temporary, and removing ‘illegal’ migrants. To do this, the immigration system introduced higher financial and educational thresholds, as well as English tests. It also targeted various services and provisions, such as housing, banking, and work permits, to ensure the environment is hostile to ‘illegal’ migrants and overstayers.

Second, the UK immigration policies are mostly racialised and gendered, targeting the restriction of BAME immigrants. This was manifested in the voucher system of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 and the prioritisation of male migrants for the first deportation flights to Rwanda (Taylor 2023). Additionally, despite its push for a skill-based migration, the UK market hardly recognised the educational qualifications and work experiences of migrants from the Global South (Tsegay 2020). Many highly skilled migrants from the Global South face work precarity due to challenges with the transferability of their human capital. As a result, they are engaged in low-skilled jobs.

Finally, the endless enactment of migration documents and laws demonstrates that a migration fix is not a sustainable solution (Schmid and Bird 2025). It mainly serves as a temporary political tool to address public opinion and win elections. However, its impact is significant on the immigrants, especially refugees and asylum seekers, since it worsens their socio-economic challenges (Bauman 1996, 1997, 1998; Tsegay 2020). Therefore, this article is important for understanding the migration fix in UK immigration policies and their effects on asylum seekers, refugees, and other migrants. Nonetheless, since this article is based on a scoping review, it highlights the need for empirical research to gather firsthand accounts from migrants.