Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit
What fresh hell? UK policies targeting homeless migrants for deportation after Brexit and Covid-19
Abstract
Before Covid-19 around a quarter of the UK's rough sleeping population were non-UK nationals, with the proportion rising above half in some metropolitan areas. The UK government's targeting of rough-sleeping EU citizens for `administrative removal' between 2010-2017 reflected a trend in social policy towards enforcement- rather than support-based `solutions' to migrant homelessness. Changes to the Immigration Rules in late 2020 to make rough sleeping a ground for refusal or cancellation of permission to be in the UK represent a revival of this tendency. This commentary analyses UK policies targeting rough sleeping non-UK nationals for deportation from a practitioner's perspective - the author ran a rights project for homeless migrants between 2018 and 2021.
You might also be interested in :
London's deportation apparatus: The ‘administrative removal’ of rough sleeping European Union citizens, 2010–17
Brexit brought an end to the free-movement rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom, but the rights of the poorest Europeans were being actively curtailed even before that. From 2010, street homeless EU citizens were deported through a series of pilot schemes operating in London. In 2016…
The UK's hostile environment: Deputising immigration control
In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May told a newspaper that she wanted to create a `really hostile environment' for irregular migrants in the UK. Although the phrase has since mutated to refer to generalised state-led marginalisation of immigrants…