UK Immigration Policy Research Articles

Post conflict identities: Affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children

Following the 2005 terrorist attacks on London it emerged that two of the terrorists charged with the failed 21st July bombings had arrived in the UK as child asylum seekers from East Africa. In the ensuing debate the bombers were represented as children that turned to hate. In this discussion paper we draw on empirical work conducted in Sheffield, UK to explore the identities, affiliations and practices of Somali asylum seeker children, aged 11–18.1 Specifically, we argue that the actions of the two bombers need to be framed within a broader understanding of the complex processes of social identification that take place as young people negotiate what it means to be a child in the context of different ‘age’, gender and racialised expectations and against a backdrop of discrimination and social exclusion in different relational geographical spaces. We begin by outlining the context of UK immigration policy, before reflecting on dominant constructions of both childhood and asylum seekers. We then discuss how these may shape young refugee and asylum seekers' own narratives of the self and the role that their mobility and specific sites of identity formation may play in this process. In doing so, we contribute to children's geographies by addressing a group – refugee and asylum seekers – that has been neglected within the sub-discipline. 1This ongoing research is being funded by the ESRC Identities and Social Action Programme (Award No: RES-148-025-0028)

The politicisation of UK immigration policy

Article by Julia Onslow-Cole (A senior partner and head of CMS Cameron McKenna's global immigration business practice) examining the development of UK business immigration law from 2003-4. Published in Amicus Curiae - Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies. The Journal is produced by the Society for Advanced Legal Studies at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London.

Analysing the creation of apartheid for asylum seekers in the UK

This article provides an examination of the contradictory conceptions of community and the misrepresentation of economic migration which have informed the UK Labour government's ‘modernisation’ of immigration and asylum policy. It does so by providing an outline of the provisions of the 1999 UK Immigration and Asylum Act‐in particular the new support system for asylum seekers‐and by examining the thinking which informs and justifies the legislation. It argues that UK immigration and asylum policy has continued to draw on notions of community which, in an unacknowledged way, relate to the categories of nation and ‘race’. It also argues that asylum policy is built on an ideological construction of the ‘economic migrant’ which is wholly misleading and lacks any serious evidential support. The article concludes that there is a continued, although unacknowledged, adherence to a version of British nationalism based on an ‘imagined community’ of nation which has long racialised particular groups of migrants and their descendants. The result is to maintain and modernise the racism of UK immigration controls. Este artículo ofrece una examen de los conceptos contradictorios de comunidad y de la tergiversación de la migración por razones económicas que han informado la modernización de la política del gobierno laborista del Reino Unido en cuanto a inmigración y asilo. Facilita el examen por un resumen de las disposiciones de la ley 1999 UK Immigration and Asylum Act‐en particular el nuevo sistema de apoyo para los que buscan asilo‐y por un examen del pensar que informa y justifica la legislación. Sostiene que la política del Reino Unido en materia de inmigración y asilo sigue haciendo uso de nociones de comunidad que, de una manera no reconocida, están relacionadas con categorías de nación y raza. También sostiene que la política en cuanto a asilo se basa en una construcción ideológica del ‘migrante por razones económicas’ que es a la vez engañosa y falta de pruebas serias. El artículo concluye que existe una adhesión continua, pero no reconida, a una versión de británico que se basa en una ‘comunidad imaginada’ de nación que por mucho tiempo ha discriminado por raza a ciertos grupos de migrantes y a sus descendientes. El resultado es el mantener y modernizar el racismo del control de immigración del Reino Unido.

UK immigration policy: ‘Firm but fair’, and failing?

Abstract This paper investigates the effectiveness of the UK immigration policy. For over two decades UK immigration policy has had clearly stated aims; to limit immigration for permanent settlement to a minimum, subject to the needs of the labour market and to obligations to dependents, genuine refugees and other exceptions. Government sources routinely describe it as firm but fair’. ‘Primary immigration’ is claimed, both by the Home Office and by the Commission for Racial Equality and by immigrant organizations, almost to have ended. The phrasing of the UK immigration policy incorporates certain ‘escape clauses’. Nonetheless if it is intended to reduce, or at least to prevent the increase of immigration defined demographically, then it has not been dramatically successful since its inception and has clearly been failing in that purpose since the mid‐1980s. This is partly because of the increase in asylum claiming since that time, and the failure to remove rejected claimants with no entitlement to remain...

Brain drain and income taxation: A UK case study

This paper summarizes the UK experience of professional immigration from LCDs since World War II, with specific estimates for the period between 1964–1972. Bhagwati-type estimates [see J. Bhagwati and W. Dellalfar, “The Brain Drain and Income Taxation”, World Development, Vol. 1. No. 1 (February 1973).] are made in order to assess the potential revenue which might be raised through imposition of a surtax on after-UK-tax incomes of professional immigrants. This revenue would then be recycled back to the LDCs. The paper considers such influences on immigration trends as UK employment prospects and immigration policy in the USA, and closes with a discussion of the scope and implications of the proposed tax.