Introduction

In Part 1 of this book, ‘Scales and locales of migrating borders’, the first three chapters on empire, national bordering in the United Kingdom and in the EU are the locational and temporal scalar chapters for assessing which frames of migration control resonate over history and which emerge at specific junctures. Through each of these scales, we find that work, family and emergencies (such as health or security) are the critical emergent themes in migration control. In Part 2, ‘Themes and practices of migrating borders’, the next three chapters take each theme in turn in analysing the role of law, and accessing different scales of analysis (the ordered and bordered workplace, the intimate yet publicly scrutinised family unit, and the emergencies that spread out in time and space becoming mundane and everyday). It is possible to detect identifiable patterns in how and why law is used in bordering practices and how these can be challenged through law as well. This chapter analyses the first theme on the workplace before the next two deal with families and emergencies.

The workplace is a critical site of bordering because work is a major driver for migration around the globe. In the UK work draws people from all around the globe. It is one of the major reasons for arrival in the UK, along with joining family members already in the UK and coming from abroad to study in the UK. On average, from 2010 to 2019, 40 per cent of migrants moving to the UK for at least a year said that their main reason for moving was work (ONS 2020). Migration Observatory reports that almost half of the increase in non-EU immigration from 2019 to 2023 was because of workers (21 per cent) and their dependants (27 per cent) (Sumption, Walsh and Brindle 2024). Career driven, professionally mobile individuals tend to migrate for career purposes in their twenties, thirties and forties, which also corresponds to the prime age of reproduction (Roos 2013). Career-based international relocations in individuals’ lives coincide with the timeframe for forming partnerships that are likely to lead to creating families. Some migrants come for education and then find employment and eventually form families. In this manner these long-term migration pathways are linked and interconnected.

Migration for work from poorer countries to richer ones is sought out by rich countries which need workers, especially in sectors where their own populations lack skills or are unwilling to take up employment. Yet there is widespread reluctance to treat migrant workers fairly. A widely prevalent political trope is that migrants take away local jobs or undercut local wages in highly developed economies. Paradoxically, out-of-work migrants are also equally reviled for being benefit scroungers, even if they have little or no access to public support and are blamed for draining the countries which have advanced welfare support resources. So, for every kind of work (the desirable and the undesirable) as well as a lack of work itself, migrants find themselves vilified by some members of host country populations, the press, politicians and sometimes by official government policies. Thus, migrant workers may have wings for migration but often cannot fly free of host country restrictions. In the words of one of Ukraine’s foremost poets Lina Kostento in her poem ‘Wings’: ‘A person it seems cannot fly.… But has wings. Yes – has wings! And those wings – not made of feather or fluff, But of truth, of virtue, and of trust.’ The lack of wings for migrants once they reach their host countries is created out of a lack of trust in host countries. Their host countries also engage in protectionism for citizen workers.

Workplace bordering is complicated because it serves many different parties. It is not just between employers, the state and employees. Control of labour is multi-sited. It involves controlling movement at source (prior to departure through visa applications and checks), on arrival (checking for documents at borders) and continued monitoring through document checks at the workplace. Bordering tensions permeate from employers to employees themselves who can assume significant monitoring and reporting responsibilities at the workplace. Workplaces can also flout requirements to regulate migration status should this be profitable. One example of this is the gig economy which often hires ‘illegal’ workers.

Workplace bordering makes it challenging for migrants to obtain and retain work, an aspect which can be traced to the hostile environment legacy set out in Chapter 2. Should they be able to access work they may be exploited and paid less. They can then be blamed for driving down wages. As mentioned before, if they fail to obtain work and seek any kind of assistance, they can be labelled ‘benefits scroungers’ and ‘fraudsters’ who are welfare burdens. However, sometimes if they lack legal status or have short-term visa holder status, they do not have any entitlement to access welfare. In such situations, if they cannot find work, they are driven to desperate measures like working in the underground economy. This in turn can create more problems such as criminal exploitation and poor living conditions. Conditions of modern slavery and trafficking (which provide additional reasons for greater migration control) are thus the seamy underbellies of workplace bordering.

While concern about access to the labour market is tied to access, real or imagined, to welfare, most migrants spend the healthiest periods of their life working with no recourse to public funds. Arguably this contributes to the drawing away of the best workers at the peak of their productivity from their own economies of origin which are usually less developed – a phenomenon termed ‘brain drain’ when it takes place in the professional sphere. Many such workers (although not all) in their old age retire to other economies (including their economies of origin) and again draw on resources of other countries in their old age rather than in their countries of migration for work.

Work is not just about the economy and the marketplace. The labour market is viewed as one of the primary sites of integration for migrants who can learn about host country culture and acquire new knowledge, skills and professional developments as well as developing more contacts with fellow workers (Ager and Strang 2008, 170). Appropriate labour recruitment and facilitation, as well as elimination of some people from work, is one of the central functions of modern-day immigration bordering in advanced economies. Controlling who has access, and is actually in the workplace, and who is excluded, and sent out from it (or kept invisible from it), is a form of locational or micro-spatial bordering. In order to maximise the recruitment of productive workers who are desired and excluding those likely to be burdens on the national economy, there is immigration planning on which skills are to be prioritised. States, through immigration policies, have a considerable role in creating and shaping irregularity (Åhlberg and Granada 2022). By delineating which immigration routes are opened and for whom, the state creates spaces for both regular and irregular migration. This chapter therefore scrutinises the workplace and the impact on the workplace of various macro shifts such as hostile environment policies, Brexit, the pandemic and changes in asylum policies, together with new and emerging technology, while looking at various categories of workers based on their structural vulnerability to exploitation.

Most migrants in the UK, with the notable exception of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, are permitted to engage in some form of employment. Workers can include a variety of people. They could be citizens who could face discrimination (especially if in less skilled occupations). They could be migrants with indefinite leave to remain (who are mostly so-called highly skilled migrants who can usually proceed to citizenship) or ‘skilled’ migrants on visas such as UK Tier 2 visa holders (discussed in greater detail further in this chapter) who can usually proceed to indefinite residence after a specified period of time. Workers could be other migrants whose temporary visa has a ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition attached (especially vulnerable are those tied to specific employers such as domestic workers or seasonal agricultural workers). They could be undocumented migrant workers or even failed asylum seekers who may be working in detention centres for nominal payment.

Even skilled workers are not immune from exploitation. They may remain in limbo for years while seeking long-term secure status. A key theme of this chapter is thus vulnerability, which is both exploited, and enhanced, by bordering practices. The state does not merely fail to redress exploitation but through taking the lead in bordering practices and collaborating with private companies and individuals in heightening these practices, it sometimes places people into structural positions where they can be readily exploited.

Exploitation can happen to anyone in the workforce. Workers can be directly exploited and abused by the owner-manager of a business or someone who works for the owner. But the owners and managers of a company might be unaware that an employee or middleman is exploiting people working for their business. Companies can be infiltrated by organised criminal gangs. In other situations, workers being exploited may work for a third-party organisation in the UK, or one which operates across international borders, and they are being sub-contracted to a legitimate business. People with vulnerabilities (whether that’s down to their personal circumstances, their employment status, their language abilities or something else that isolates them from other people) are at enhanced risk of different kinds of abuse. People are exploited in many different ways in the workplace, including having wages deducted at source or wages being wrongly withheld, or having wages and paperwork being controlled by another person. Workers could have their liberty restricted. They could be kept in isolation and subjected to psychological and physical abuse as well as violence and bullying. Sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and exploitation as part of the activities of organised criminal gangs are other kinds of modern slavery.

While all workers could be exploited, some are in less protected situations, so the range of likelihood of exploitation varies with their structural vulnerability. Migrant workers have additional vulnerabilities connected to their status as migrants. Many migrant workers have fled worse conditions or abuse elsewhere and thus do not consider their situation to be relatively worse even when they are being badly exploited. They may not be aware some of these are illegal for employers to do especially if these are more subtle kinds of abuse such as poor health and safety standards, for example, work without breaks and cramped and/or unsanitary accommodation. Even if they wish to complain about or report their employer, they may feel unable to do so out of discomfort or fear about their own legal status (they may be dependent on their employer or have irregular status) and ability to find alternative positions while retaining status.

In pre-war times there was little legal restriction on working in the UK, but this changed when wartime powers were extended after the Great War through the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act 1919. Migrants classed as ‘aliens’ were now required to seek permission from the British government for employment. These restrictions did not apply to British subjects and, later, when subjects were re-categorised as Citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKC) they retained their right to work (as mentioned before in Chapter 2, this was through the British Nationality Act 1948, which had also protected their right to enter and reside). We have already seen how this demographic was later targeted with restrictions and eventually became part of the Windrush generation. The ‘hostile environment’ (recently rebranded by the government as the ‘compliant environment’) was a set of policies aimed at identifying and reducing the number of immigrants in the UK with no right to remain. It was introduced mainly through the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, to restrict irregular migrants’ ability to work and earn money, to rent and to access healthcare and welfare benefits. Those who control the resources such as employers and landlords are required to conduct immigration document checks and assist in immigration enforcement. Failure to do so could result in penalties and fines and/or criminal prosecution. Immigration status data is also shared with and between government departments. Use of such data can lead to detention and deportation if any government department is involved, and they share data with the Home Office.

In this chapter we will revisit document checking, which is connected to the workplace and which led to the mistreatment of the Windrush generation. In Chapter 3 we observed the importance of worker status for EU nationals and how that progressed to a panoply of rights. A key feature of free movement rules that were in place until 2021 was that EU migrants could work in any job, whereas non-EU citizens on work visas would often have to meet skills-based selection criteria to be able to work. This has now changed because of the significant effects of Brexit on the workplace which brought all foreigners under similar restrictions. we will investigate how this also contributes to workplace bordering in this chapter.

The points-based system for work entry

Prior to 1913, work permits were not required for the employment of foreigners (Ng and Whalley 2005). Now it takes considerable time and effort to assemble the correct paperwork for employment. Migrants pay hefty fees and wait for years, needing both luck and persistence to get their requisite visa for work. There is usually little consideration for the needs of incoming migrants; the workplace is monitored for regulating access to the domestic labour market and ensuring the specific needs of the labour market are met for economic objectives.

Many advanced economies try to regulate labour flow through differential access for various categories of migrant labour (Salter 2006, 171). They adopt a points-based system (PBS) as a way of selecting labour migrants based on their characteristics, such as their educational qualifications, language proficiency, work experience and occupation. Points systems do not apply to all categories of migrants but only for workers. Family migrants, asylum seekers and students arrive through other processes. In 2008, the Labour government launched a PBS in the UK placing migrants into five tiers for purposes of visas, so as to secure better educated and skilled migrants who would not require welfare support. This act of categorisation of workers is a way of sorting out prospective applicants in a manner that simply keeps those not ‘desired’ in the population out of the country. Lukes’s second dimension of power, which is more passive, is manifested here through keeping issues and agendas off the table (2021). Law maintains homogeneity through this categorisation by selecting for preferred characteristics such as workers with higher education from abroad. These foreign workers are unlikely to be poorer than general domestic educated and trained workers and are indeed likely to contribute far more.

In modern times, for most employers, where their worker comes from is likely to matter less than their ability to do their work. To provide them with the necessary skilled workforce, work visas (for instance, US H-1B visa system) in the United States (Title 8, US Code) and the UK (highly skilled category) must generally be for graduate-level jobs only (for example, those normally requiring a bachelor’s degree, such as engineers or doctors). Other countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Norway define ‘skilled’ as including many tradespeople and people with sub-degree vocational qualifications (such as plumbers or paramedics) for whom there is local demand. Canada, Australia and New Zealand are examples of established points systems and the UK too applied a similar system to only non-EU citizens prior to Brexit. After Brexit, EU nationals are also subject to the same mode of selection.

Labour selection based on desirability for the domestic market is the chief rationale in centralised government decision making and the setting of numbers for specific types of work. Employer feedback on industry needs can also be important. Eligibility criteria such as skills requirements or employer regulations are the most common way of shaping the nature and scale of migration. Many countries do not use points-based systems to select work migrants but instead rely on ‘employer-driven’ work-visa systems, while some of the governments using points systems have tried to increase the role of employers (for example, by prioritising migrants who have job offers). In wholly employer-driven systems, prospective migrants must have a job offer lined up with an employer who is willing to sponsor them prior to application. In the UK, employers are given considerable freedom to hire workers through visas and other mechanisms designed to match demand with supply of labour. Compared to the UK’s employer-driven system, Australia’s points system is more centrally planned as the government, rather than employers, plays the key role in deciding who should be admitted. There is also more scrutiny of migrants’ personal characteristics, such as their age and qualifications, and not just the jobs they are likely to perform. Australia allows people to migrate without a job offer in place, although other countries with points tests, such as New Zealand, either require or prioritise job offers. In addition to conditions attached to the job, many work permit systems require the workers themselves to meet personal eligibility criteria. Common requirements include language proficiency, degree qualifications, age restrictions or nationality restrictions/quotas. The UK’s current system categorises migrants based on skills (Kierans 2021). It is often unclear to applicants what kind of skill is preferred. There is no single definition of ‘skilled’. Two common ways of defining the skill level of a job are the level of education that is required to perform it (for example, whether people doing the job generally require a post-secondary qualification or bachelor’s degree) and the salary (for example, whether the salary is above a chosen threshold (MAC 2013)). However, there may be some exceptions to the main skill requirements, for example in the case of occupations that are deemed to be in high demand or to have particular social and economic benefits that make them worth prioritising.

A primary objective is to select people who are likely to integrate successfully, particularly if they will become eligible to settle permanently. Thus, governments impose additional criteria such as language requirements as eligibility criteria. The very presence of a large number of irregularly entered workers who do not have the correct legal documents for work, however, indicates a mismatch between centrally determined systems of entry for workers and those who are actually required for work in a country. This is especially applicable in certain kinds of jobs for which there is no local supply of skills or simply no local interest because of low wages or poor progression. Yet, these are the very sectors that become the prime targets of immigration enforcement and experience maximum workplace bordering. In order to be secure, visas have increasingly become akin to property rights in terms of value (Casella and Cox 2018).

Enhanced immigration enforcement and lack of sufficient numbers of visas for lower-paid/lower-skilled jobs mean that irregularly hired employees are left at the mercy of exploitative employers. While many modern slavery provisions are supposed to assist with such situations, there is a rise in vulnerability of workers who do not have the correct documents because of hostile environment document-checking obligations. Hence workplace bordering facilitates both expropriation and exploitation of workers who come from poorer countries and seek opportunities to sustain themselves and their families and through this exploitation keeps costs of production/sale of goods and services lower for host country consumers of developed economies. It has thus become necessary to hold the correct visa to simply ward off exploitation. Even with visas, workers remain vulnerable, as these are easily withdrawn when the employer fires the worker. Once they lose employment with their sponsoring employer, the worker no longer has a right to reside and has to leave the country.

Visas are also difficult to obtain. For instance, for the US H-1B visa workers first need to obtain a job offer from an American employer. The employment position must be in a specialty occupation requiring certain levels of skills, expertise or a degree of some kind. Visas are allocated essentially by a lottery because the demand far outstrips the supply of these visas. H-1B visas are insufficient in number and thus become premium property for those who acquire them (Ng and Whalley 2005).

At the other extreme are visas which are nearly independent of residence requirements. For instance, digital nomad visa (DNV) programmes grant individuals temporary residence in a country while working exclusively remotely (Casi, Mardan and Stage 2023). This kind of remote working became especially popular after the Covid-19 pandemic. Working abroad on a tourist visa is illegal so people who work in different countries via the internet technically need to have specific visas. However, more than forty countries have introduced digital nomad visas and relaxed residence requirements so that individuals can work remotely. Workers are disconnected from the jurisdiction where they are formally employed or where the people they serve reside. The DNV programmes permit individuals to choose their country of tax residence. This has especially facilitated mobility for freelancing tech entrepreneurs and those who work on social media content.

These kinds of flexible work visas show that with the necessary will it is possible to ease the path for workers to live and work across borders, but it appears to take place only rarely. Professionally mobile people such as tech-industry workers have some structural clout in the global economy because of their in-demand skills but most others cannot hope for such mobility.

Brexit and the labour market

A major source of migration for UK workplaces is from other EU countries. By 2020, an estimated 55 per cent of foreign-born workers who said that they had originally moved to the UK for work-related reasons were born in EU countries, which was largely the result of fifteen years of migration from EU countries following EU enlargement in 2004. EU workers could earlier avail themselves of free movement for more flexibility of travel and for staying for longer periods of time out of the UK if needed. They could also be out of work without losing the right to live and work in the UK. Brexit created a major change by removing the right to work associated with free movement for EU nationals and by introducing a work permit system for them identical to that which was already in place for other third-country nationals. EU nationals now have to depend on remaining employed for at least five years for continuous residence in order to apply for indefinite leave to remain (permanent settlement). They no longer have recourse to public funds.

Shortly before introducing its post-Brexit immigration system, the government said the aim of this policy would be to make the UK ‘a magnet for the best and brightest’ workers from around the world.¹ It added that ‘there will be fewer lower-skilled migrants’ and ‘overall numbers will come down’. The opposite has happened, with net migration levels nearly tripling from 219,000 in 2019 to a record 606,000 in 2022 (Sumption and Brindle 2024). Post Brexit, EU workers have been more likely to be working in low-wage jobs and less likely to be in high-skilled jobs than non-EU workers.

Post-Brexit changes to the UK immigration system have created new work visas because of labour market needs on a scale never previously experienced. A lot of the debate surrounding the new points-based immigration system has focussed on the Skilled Worker visa for foreign nationals with a job offer. This replaced the old Tier 2 (General) work permit. Unlike the Tier 2 visa, there is no maximum amount of time that can be spent in the UK on a Skilled Worker visa, provided the leave remains valid, and workers can change employers, so this improves conditions for workers. However, eligibility for a Skilled Worker visa still requires a job offer and English language ability. People can now be sponsored to work in medium-skilled rather than high-skilled jobs in many instances. Other significant changes include reducing the minimum salary requirement for a job offer, which can be as low as £20,480 per annum. The requirement to advertise jobs in the UK first has also been abolished and the annual quota on visas has also been removed. In the past, elementary care workers were not eligible for recruitment under the Health and Care Worker visa. This changed in February 2022 when immigration rules were relaxed for foreign care workers. The ‘Health and Care Worker’ visa is now essentially a sub-category of the Skilled Worker visa. It allows medical professionals to come to or stay in the UK to do an eligible job with the NHS, an NHS supplier or in adult social care. Indian nationals were by far the largest nationality for Skilled Worker visas in 2023, receiving around a third of visas to work both in the health sector and in all other industries. Overall, Indian citizens received 25 per cent of all main applicant work visas in 2023 (Sumption and Brindle 2024). The Covid pandemic had automatically led to a drop in non-EU labour migration. Total work visa grants fell by 40 per cent for main applicants in 2020 (Home Office 2023), and ONS analysis suggests that many people who received work visas did not take them up or left the UK early (ONS 2021). However non-EU work-related migration has grown strongly since 2021, following a pandemic-induced decline. Hence the trend now is towards cutting back numbers from these regions once again.

Indeed, at present there is a backlash against the legal migration that has taken place through the worker visa pathways in the UK with the Health and Care Worker visa route being specifically targeted for cuts (Brown 2025). A similar backlash is not there for other visa pathways. The nationality receiving the largest share of Youth Mobility visas (which is limited to people aged 18–31 from certain regions of the world) were Australians.² There is no plan to roll these schemes back and the UK may even extend these to youth EU-wide in the future. Again, these differences in approach to the different migration pathways appears racialised in nature with migration from poorer, less white populations not preferred.

Naturalisation and belonging

Anderson writes that the fantasy citizen is a worker citizen (Anderson 2024, 2771). Fantasy citizenship is created through the ‘right to work’. Some have it and some do not. The highly skilled worker is normally valued as a prospective citizen even if sometimes they too spend years on temporary visas (for instance in the US on H-1B visas). They are considered productive as well as responsible and suited for the needs of the host country. Citizenship by investment as well as through skill conversion into workplace productivity are examples of who is considered deserving of a place in society (Bassel et al. 2021). This fits in with the prevalent market logic. All the work pathways that potentially lead to permanent residence are for high-income roles in employment. Low-income workers do not usually have a means of acquiring long-term residence but remain reliant on continued domestic demand for their services. Long-term status is usually linked to a period of continued residence. For instance, all EU countries (except Ireland and Denmark) participate in the 2003 European Directive that requires them to grant long-term status to non-EU citizens after five years of residence. The UK also permits applications for indefinite leave to remain after five years of residence in the UK although recent proposals are to increase this to a much longer qualifying period (with ten years being considered).³ Other countries give immediate settlement. For example, many skilled workers migrating to Australia receive permanent residence rights immediately on arrival. No such schemes exist for low-income workers whose work permit programmes are time limited. Low-income workers are expected to return home after the permitted period expires and are not allowed to apply for permanent settlement (Ruhs 2013). These programmes restrict other rights, such as the ability to bring family members. Pathways to naturalisation for wealthier migrants demonstrate that in present times economic criteria predominate at least in formal requirements for long-term membership rather than any other characteristics, but wealthier migrants also pay a premium for their new national memberships. They often lose out on tax benefits and other previous employment benefits as they migrate, but they are able to negotiate using their presumed productivity.

In the US the H-1B system is a dual intent visa. It provides for the temporary recruitment of workers but as it can also give people long-term status. Foreign workers can use it to eventually naturalise (Jacobs 2022). Scholars find that there are severe inefficiencies in how the H1B system works as there is a long delay for these visas leading to a green card permanent status as well as these being limited in number (Jacobs 2022). The hurdles mean that foreign workers who become valuable to their US employers and who gain experience in the US are forced to return to their countries of origin. These outcomes also drive away future workers. Visa backlogs and waiting lists affect who will actually come to the US and remain there. Foreign students worry that there will be no jobs once they finish their studies (González 2021).

Most H1B visa migrants work in technology-related fields or the pharma sector. All of them have higher education degrees. The majority are from India, with Chinese nationals next in terms of number of applicants. Yet there are visa caps, so migrants from India and China have long waits in visa queues. Also, H-1B visa holders depend on having continued employment to proceed to green cards. In 2023 many H-1B holders in the US were laid off from their jobs with tech companies. The Canadian government created a special scheme to draw them to Canada instead. It stated,

As of July 16, 2023, H-1B specialty occupation visa holders in the US, and their accompanying immediate family members, will be eligible to apply to come to Canada. Approved applicants will receive an open work permit of up to three years in duration, which means they will be able to work for almost any employer anywhere in Canada. Their spouses and dependants will also be eligible to apply for a temporary resident visa, with a work or study permit, as needed. (Wilson 2025)

The government statement continues: ‘This will expand the opportunities available for skilled workers to continue to pursue their careers in the high-tech sector and contribute to economic growth and prosperity in North America.’ There was massive demand for this scheme with full capacity reached within twenty-four hours. These kinds of schemes show that one country’s difficulties in immigration systems can provide another with an opportunity to attract workers.

Wealthy migrants can directly obtain citizenship or residence by investment (jus doni) without bothering to enter the labour market and on a fast-track basis. Some provide residence-by-investment (RBI) programmes, also known as golden visas, while other countries such as Malta sell citizenship for the super wealthy. This practice has recently been considered as undermining EU citizenship by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). On 29 April 2025, the ECJ issued its ruling in EC v Malta [2025] (Case C-181/23) and stated that Malta’s investor citizenship framework is not compatible with EU law. The court was careful to respect the sovereignty of member states in the granting of nationality, but it asserted that this competence must be exercised consistently with the principles and values of the European Union as the national citizenship confers EU citizenship rights also to citizens. The court found that investor citizenship and sale of citizenship takes away from the substantive values of EU citizenship and are contrary to the objectives set out in Articles 20 TFEU and 4(3) TEU.

The UK also has a means of attracting high net worth individuals with investor visas (Tier 1 for investment of about £2 million in the UK economy). This is however an unusual process of becoming British. There are three main ways of becoming a UK citizen: automatic acquisition at birth, registration (usually for children) and naturalisation (usually for adults). Almost all migrant adults without a British parent will have to naturalise to become UK citizens. Adult migrants who apply for citizenship must usually have lived in the UK for at least five or six years⁴ and must already have the permanent right to live in the UK (that is, ILR for non-EU citizens and permanent residence or settled status for EU citizens). Applicants must meet a language requirement and pass the ‘Life in the UK’ test, which is designed to evaluate their knowledge of UK institutions, history and culture.⁵ Applicants must have ‘good character’, which includes paying taxes and not having a recent criminal record. They must also have been physically present in the UK for most of the previous years of required residency.

Scholars question the value of these various elements of requirements for naturalisation. The requirement of taking an oath in the citizenship ceremony has been particularly controversial as an oath of allegiance is not required for those who are citizens through other means. While providing a formal means of inclusion, the legal process of naturalisation also makes it clear that not all citizens are perceived as equal (Sredanovic 2022). Clearly naturalisation is seen as a process of curing people of their foreignness and serves to underline the need to prove themselves to be even better than citizens by birth: what scholars have termed a ‘super citizen’ (Badenhoop 2021, 579).

Migrants in the UK who are foreign nationals can acquire the right to live in the UK permanently without becoming citizens. Non-UK citizens who have permanent residence or settlement have extensive rights similar to those of UK citizens; for example, there are no restrictions on their right to work. Some settled migrants live their whole lives in the UK without becoming citizens. However, becoming a British citizen brings certain additional rights. In addition to voting, it is much harder for the government to deport citizens, and citizenship cannot be lost as a result of long absences from the country. There are also some specific restrictions on the jobs certain non-UK citizens can do in the public sector (armed forces and civil services, for instance).

The most common ground for refusal of naturalisation is conduct. Good character is required of anyone over the age of ten seeking to register or naturalise. In recent times it has also been a key reason why people have lost their British citizenship (an aspect investigated in greater detail in Chapter 6). Conduct has also become a new issue for naturalisation of asylum seekers in the UK. The UK government has published recent guidance about naturalisation and conduct for asylum seekers which makes it almost impossible for people who arrive in the UK by dangerous journeys to become British citizens. A dangerous journey is one which could be via a small boat across the English Channel, but it could also be by means such as hiding in a vehicle. Previously refugees who had arrived by irregular routes would need to wait ten years before being considered for citizenship but now they are normally refused citizenship, regardless of the time that has passed from their arrival. This change will affect applications for British citizenship submitted on or after 10 February 2025, but the person could have come to the UK many years prior and they could already have indefinite leave to remain in the UK. The change has happened through case worker guidance when assessing if an applicant for citizenship is of ‘good character’.⁶ This is despite the UK being signatory to international law treaties, such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which states that asylum seekers and refugees should not be penalised for illegal entry.

‘Lower-skilled’ workers and vulnerability

Studies show that while immigration policies have become more restrictive, immigration flows have continued to increase (Castles 2010; Clemens et al. 2018). In low-skilled jobs, (more appropriately referred to as low-paid jobs, because skill requirements from workers is actually quite high in these jobs), employers look for migrant workers to perform jobs which are not desired by local people. Sometimes these jobs are made available through legal pathways, as otherwise there would be more illegal employment. For low-paid jobs in the UK people can only avail themselves of a few immigration routes: the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, the Tier 5 Seasonal Worker visa for agricultural workers, and other limited temporary permits under Tier 5. These routes do not adequately respond to the continued demand for migrant workers in low-wage sectors like cleaning, construction, hospitality and warehousing. The lack of safe and regular migration routes for low-paid work post-Brexit is a significant concern, as people are still likely to migrate for this type of work but will have to do so through irregular and often more dangerous channels.

The long-term consequence of low-paid immigration could be about difficulties in integration, competition with poor people in the UK in similar jobs and opening up legal pathways for exploitation because of low pay (Ruhs 2016). Yet not opening legal pathways for sectors where there is demand is likely to facilitate practices like forced labour and human trafficking. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 tries to ban such behaviour but there can be many situations which are not covered by it. An example of such vulnerability is in tied visas, for example, Overseas Domestic Worker visas. A person on the Overseas Domestic Worker visa is only allowed to work in the UK for six months and only as a domestic worker (cleaners, chauffeurs, cooks, those providing personal care for the employer and their family, nannies and others performing such jobs). They have to enter with an employer whose household they were already working in prior to coming to the UK (Anti-Slavery International et al. 2022). They cannot extend their visa even with the same employer.

Since 2016 Overseas Domestic Worker visa holders can theoretically change employer within the domestic work sector, but they cannot apply to renew their six-month visa, even if they have an offer of ongoing new employment. This makes the right to change employer meaningless in practice. It is not realistic to find a new job in a private household of a stranger in a foreign land with only a few months/days left on one’s visa and no options to renew this. The visa also does not allow for access to public funds. Since 2016, safeguards have also been in place for migrant domestic workers as part of the visa application process, such as the requirement to be seen alone during the visa interview and that they should receive an information leaflet setting out their rights in the UK and who to contact should abuse occur. However, these safeguards are rarely applied or made use of. While there are mechanisms in place to identify and provide support to victims of trafficking and modern slavery in the UK, these only apply to migrant domestic workers whose treatment amounts to the legal definition of trafficking and modern slavery. In cases where migrant domestic workers have experienced violations of their labour rights, but which do not meet the threshold of trafficking or modern slavery, they are not in a position to access protection and assistance.

Employers have been shown to take advantage of these restrictions to impose abusive or exploitative conditions, knowing that migrant domestic workers are unlikely to leave or complain when that would mean losing their work and with it their right to remain in the UK (Kalayaan 2019). It is therefore ‘not only irregular migrants who are unable to challenge violations of labour laws and standards but also those working legally’ (Anderson 2008, 202). Exploitation is defined in section 3 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 as a form of abuse where someone is forced or coerced into doing things for the benefit of others. It includes slavery, servitude or forced/compulsory labour, sexual exploitation, bodily exploitation or being subjected to force, threats or deception to provide services or benefits to another person such as debt bondage, drug trafficking and financial exploitation.

Potential grounds for protection for workers is protection from discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 but this is not really available now for immigration status. The recent Supreme Court ruling in Taiwo v Olaigbe [2016] UKSC 31 confirmed that immigration status does not fall within the protected characteristic of nationality. Employees that are targeted in the workplace on the basis of their immigration status (or suspected immigration status) will not therefore be able to make any claim under the Equality Act 2010. In Taiwo, the Supreme Court unanimously dismissed the appeals about the mistreatment of persons because of their position as vulnerable migrant domestic workers. The workers in Taiwo were dependent on their employers for their continued employment and residence in the UK and claimed their ill treatment constituted race/nationality discrimination, contrary to the Equality Act 2010.

The appellant in the first appeal was a Nigerian national who came to the UK on a migrant domestic worker visa. The respondents were her employers. The appellant was seriously mistreated by the respondents and successfully brought claims in the employment tribunal for failure to pay the national minimum wage, for unlawful deductions from wages, for failure to provide rest periods and for a failure to give her written terms of employment. However, her claim for racial discrimination was unsuccessful. The appellant in the second appeal suffered similar experiences and was also a Nigerian worker in the UK on a domestic worker’s visa. She successfully brought similar claims in the employment tribunal, but the Employment Appeal Tribunal overturned the employment tribunal’s finding that there had been direct race discrimination.

Lady Hale gave the only substantive judgment and said that neither appellant had suffered race/nationality discrimination, because they suffered abuse as a result of their precarious immigration status, rather than their nationality. Race was a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, s 13(1), and this included colour, nationality and ethnic origin. Nationality and immigration status could not be equated given that non-British nationals may have a secure immigration status here and therefore not be vulnerable in the way that the appellants were.

Protected characteristics in the Equality Act and predecessor legislation aimed to protect specific groups who have historically been discriminated against and did so by interfering in other parties’ rights to freedom of contract. Parliament could have opted to include immigration status in the list of protected characteristics but did not do so. The treatment of the appellants was attributable to the nature of their visa, which made them dependent on their employers for continued residence, rather than their nationality. The Supreme Court also found that there was no indirect discrimination because the vulnerability concerned the visas. Had the claimants been non-British nationals with the right to live and work in the UK they would not have experienced similar issues, so their being Nigerian had nothing to do with this exploitation. Lady Hale expressly refused to rule out the possibility of a successful claim for indirect discrimination in a case involving migrant workers, but one would have to carefully identify one that ‘would have applied to all their employees, whether or not they had the particular immigration status of [the Claimants]’. Pre-2012 the Overseas Domestic Worker visa allowed domestic workers to change employer with the linked and required right to renew the visa but unfortunately as of now this pushes migrant workers into the hostile environment precarity where they are left at the mercy of the employer.

A technology-related development in low-paid work is that of the rise of the ‘gig’ economy (Obinna and Bacong 2024). While the gig economy could include off-line freelancing or sub-contracting for services, it includes the use of digital platforms which are used to match workers to those who need one-time or short-term services from them. There have been many legal disputes about whether such workers have any job-related protections, whether they can unionise or can go on strike since they have been categorised as freelancers rather than as employees (for example, the cases about Uber workers or Amazon) (Boewe and Schulten 2019; Halliday 2021). Immigration related precarity is even more prevalent in the gig economy where irregular working may be permitted and exploited to keep prices of services down.

As seen in the previous chapter, a key hostile environment policy is the offence of illegal working, introduced under the Immigration Act 2016. Being and working in the UK without authorisation was already prohibited under UK law, carrying the risk of deportation, but the Immigration Act 2016 made ‘illegal working’ a criminal offence in its own right, punishable by an unlimited fine, a six-month custodial sentence and the confiscation of any income earned during the relevant working period. As a result of the offence, victims of exploitation are even more likely to go unidentified and unsupported. People would be unwilling to come forward as they could be punished themselves instead of the actual perpetrators of abuse being punished.

Who is an irregular worker?

Irregular status holders are not a homogeneous group of people. UK’s exit from the European Union has resulted in an increase in the number of irregular migrants in the United Kingdom and this increase, when combined with measures that have progressively restricted the rights and entitlements of various immigration categories, creates an environment conducive to labour exploitation of more groups of people. Labour shortages may function as a ‘pull factor’, encouraging people working in sectors without regular routes to use alternatives, such as overstaying and diverse types of semi-compliance, including people working on visitors’ visas or outside of the sector permitted by their visa. Finally, the concept of irregularity is further complicated by the fact that people can end up being treated as irregular despite this not being the case. As we have seen in Chapter 2, the most notable and well-known example of people wrongly being deemed irregular is, of course, the Windrush scandal. This major policy failure led to people who had arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1973 from the Caribbean and other parts of the Commonwealth, and who had the legal right to live and work in the UK, being denied access to services, wrongfully detained, threatened with deportation and, in at least 83 cases, wrongfully deported due to their inability to prove their right to reside in the UK (York 2018).

A less well-known example of people being wrongly treated as irregular are cases where authorities end up detaining victims of human trafficking who have the right to remain in the UK under the Modern Slavery Act 2015.⁷ There are currently five primary international instruments that hold United Nations Member States accountable for meeting their obligations to prevent slavery and various forms of human exploitation which include the issues in the UK legislation: (1) The 1926 Slavery Convention; (2) The 1930 Forced Labour Convention; (3) The 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery; (4) The 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and (5) The 2000 Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. In keeping with these developments, the Modern Slavery Act aims to identify victims, punish offenders and hold organisations accountable for exploitative practices. However, its effectiveness has been questioned by those who have examined the evidence of how it operates (Barkay et al. 2024; Mantouvalou 2018).

In the UK, the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the framework for the identification of potential victims of modern slavery. To be recognised as such and access support, potential victims must be referred to the NRM by a ‘first responder’, an organisation authorised to carry out an initial risk assessment and to refer cases to the NRM, for further assessment by a competent authority. First responders currently include local authorities, the UK Visas and Immigration, and several nongovernmental organisations, among others (Home Office and UK Visas and Immigration 2025). Just as with irregular working, victims with insecure immigration status are usually reluctant to come forward and report their abuse for fear of immigration action against themselves. Sometimes people who survive such slavery do not even know they have been enslaved or trafficked. A well-known example is the story of British Olympian and world champion athlete Mo Farah. Despite being a well-decorated and knighted athlete, Sir Mo Farah was not sure he would not face legal consequences for revealing that he had been brought into the UK from Somalia as a child by traffickers who made him work as a domestic servant in their household. Eventually he decided to make a documentary for the BBC telling the story of his life. This documentary has raised awareness of the vulnerability of trafficked children and how they are exploited.⁸

As mentioned above, the term ‘modern slavery’ loosely refers to severe forms of exploitation such as human trafficking and forced labour. The term became more firmly embedded in UK discourse with the passing of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (Davies and Kachynska 2024). In the UK, modern slavery includes human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour. A person does not have to be moved to a different location in order to be considered a survivor of modern slavery – this is unlike trafficking, where movement is a key factor. Trafficking is one element that falls under the umbrella definition of modern slavery in the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking. Smuggling is not the same as trafficking. It is the covert and unlawful moving of someone across a border, but it could be at the request of the person being smuggled.

The legal framework governing the identification and protection of victims of trafficking/modern slavery in the UK is the Council of European Convention on Action against Trafficking (ECAT) and Article 4 ECHR (Gadd and Broad 2024). ECAT defines trafficking and imposes an array of obligations on states to prevent and combat trafficking, to protect the human rights of victims and to promote international cooperation on action against trafficking. In Rantsev v Cyprus and Russia [2010] 51 EHRR 1, the Strasbourg Court concluded that trafficking within the meaning of Article 4(a) ECAT fell within the scope of Article 4. Article 4 prohibits slavery, servitude and forced labour. Article 4 ECHR imposes a number of positive obligations upon states, and those obligations ‘must be construed in the light of [ECAT] … the Court is guided by [ECAT] and the manner in which it has been interpreted by GRETA’ (Chowdury v Greece [2017] App No 21844/15 [§104]). The primary mechanism by which the UK complies with its obligations under ECAT is through the NRM (Gower 2023).

Yet, domestic legislation which ostensibly targets such crimes makes it harder for victims to seek help. For instance, in the UK the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the Illegal Migration Act 2023 both make it more difficult for victims of modern slavery to seek support, and for some to claim asylum (Haynes 2023). These Acts frame modern slavery as a criminal activity but there is little understanding of how immigration control is a primary driver motivating the state which then incentivises businesses to cooperate in this area to the detriment of human rights of victims. Part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 addresses the provision of information relating to being a victim of modern slavery or human trafficking, compliance with slavery and trafficking information, the identification of potential victims, recovery periods, assistance and support, leave to remain for victims, and legal services (sections 58–59). Part 5 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 made changes to the Modern Slavery Act and related policy. They included raising the standards for making a decision on positive reasonable grounds. Another piece of legislation which acts as a barrier is the Illegal Immigration Act 2023. The central provision of the Illegal Immigration Act 2023 is section 2(1) which imposes upon the Secretary of State a general duty to remove a person from the UK when they engage in unlawful entry or absence of leave to remain. There are complications when the person has been a victim of modern slavery. The motivation behind these legal changes was to assist decision-makers in distinguishing between genuine and non-genuine accounts of modern slavery. New measures were also introduced to increase removals of Albanian nationals, even those identified as victims of modern slavery (Landman, Brewster and Thornton 2024). As in past years, with the Modern Slavery Act, these new measures increase scepticism about real concern for victims as they demonstrate a great interest in simply enforcing immigration control (Mantouvalou 2018).

These provisions appear to be a fairly obvious breach of the UK’s obligations under ECAT and Article 4 ECHR. Indeed, the Secretary of State was unable to make a statement of compatibility under s. 19(1)(b) HRA 1998, and s. 1(5) of the Act provides that the s. 3 HRA interpretative obligation does not apply. The government’s view set out in the ECHR memorandum is as follows:

The Government is satisfied that these provisions are capable of being applied compatibly with Article 4 ECHR. The Government has concluded that radical solutions are required to put a stop to the small boats crossing the Channel and the approach adopted in these provisions is therefore new and ambitious but taking such an approach means that the Home Secretary is therefore unable to make a statement under section 19(1)(a) of the 1999 Act.

The NRM is part of the UK Home Office which enforces control of immigration, crime and security. For a person to be supported they have to receive a positive conclusive-grounds decision on their case saying that they are indeed a victim of modern slavery. A person can continue to receive support via the NRM, however, their needs are assessed first through the process. So, after a positive conclusive-grounds decision, a person will only receive support for parts of their life where they have needs as a result of the modern slavery or trafficking they have experienced. After receiving a positive conclusive-grounds decision, a survivor who is not a UK citizen may make an immigration application to stay in the UK, but this is discretionary leave for temporary permission to stay in the UK.

Some people who apply may find that they are not considered eligible for this support at all because it is considered unlikely that they have experienced trafficking or modern slavery. This is called a negative conclusive-grounds decision. There can be a reconsideration application made if further information or evidence is to be submitted. The evidence that has to be produced must be ‘objective’ evidence of trafficking (January 2023: section 49 of the Statutory Guidance on Modern Slavery). The distrust regarding who is a victim is evident in this new requirement, as it makes it impossible for people to give a personal account of their own experience as evidence, as this is not considered objective evidence. This makes it even more difficult to obtain protection.

Another route is asylum for victims of modern slavery. The NRM route is separate from the asylum process. An NRM application and asylum claim can be submitted at the same time. In R (KTT) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2722 (Admin), the High Court held that Home Office guidance was unlawful as it did not provide for a grant of leave to remain, where a person had a pending asylum claim that was based on a fear of re-trafficking. It was held that the ordinary meaning of Article 14 is that a confirmed victim of modern slavery who is also seeking asylum must be granted leave to remain, as their stay in the UK is necessary due to their personal situation (that is, the need to pursue their asylum claim). The Court of Appeal concurred with this holding. The legal position after KTT is therefore that a person who is a confirmed victim of modern slavery and who had a pending claim for asylum that was based on a fear of re-trafficking was entitled to a grant of discretionary leave. New guidance from 16 March 2023 now provides for discretionary leave to be granted in line with KTT to those who had a positive conclusive-grounds decision made before 30 January 2023 and who had an outstanding asylum claim based ‘in a material part’ on the risk of re-trafficking.

In other countries too there are efforts to prevent and recompense for modern-day exploitative relations. In 2000, the US Congress passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), which was ‘the first comprehensive federal law designed to protect victims of sex and labor trafficking, prosecute traffickers, and prevent human trafficking in the United States and abroad’ (Leach 2022). The TVPA set some ‘minimum standards’ for the elimination of human trafficking. The government of the country should prohibit severe forms of trafficking in persons and punish acts of such trafficking. For the knowing commission of any act of sex trafficking involving force, fraud, coercion, or in which the victim of sex trafficking is a child incapable of giving meaningful consent, or of trafficking which includes rape or kidnapping or which causes a death, the government of the country should prescribe punishment commensurate with that imposed for grave crimes, such as forcible sexual assault. There are measures to implement human rights through business as well. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act of 2010, for instance, is one of those that places a duty on businesses to report (McGaughey et al. 2022). It is similar to the French ‘duty of vigilance’ law of 2017 which requires corporations to declare modern slavery practices, if any. The Australian Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) also has such provisions. In the UK, too, businesses must report in their annual statements the steps taken to ensure modern slavery is not taking place. Statements are to be published on the company’s website (if they have one). However, the measure lacks teeth, as the only penalty is that the Secretary of State can bring a civil proceeding for an injunction. The French law places greater accountability, including positive obligations on businesses to act. Australia’s approach, as in the UK, is to emphasise criminal action against offenders and corporate responsibility (Barnes, Naser and Aston 2023). All of these jurisdictions fail to wholly take account of the human rights of the victims of these offences and consider them in the context of their vulnerable migration status.

Bordering asylum seeking through work

As we have seen, victims of modern slavery may often have asylum claims. Yet asylum seekers are blocked from working in the UK. EU law requires member states to grant asylum seekers access to their labour market after they have been waiting for nine months for a decision on their claim. Members can apply more favourable provisions and/or grant access to the labour market subject to conditions. The UK imposes some of the strongest restrictions on the right to work for asylum seekers compared to other European nations. In the UK permission to work can be granted only in limited circumstances. People who have claimed asylum in the UK can apply for permission to work if they have been waiting twelve months for a decision, and if they are not considered responsible for the delay in their asylum claim. This restrictive provision can be further restricted, because even if permission is granted, the person will only be allowed to accept jobs on the shortage occupation list, which includes only a narrow range of jobs. By contrast, other developed countries have more generous provisions. Canada allows asylum seekers to work immediately, whilst in the USA they are eligible to work after six months.

Without the right to work, most people seeking asylum must rely on help from the UK government while they are waiting for the outcome of their application. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research finds that there is strong evidence to provide asylum seekers the right to work. It has published a paper on the economic and social impacts of lifting work restrictions on people seeking asylum and found that ‘allowing people seeking asylum the right to work would increase tax revenue by £1.3 billion, reduce government expenditure by £6.7 billion, increase GDP by £1.6 billion, and improve the wellbeing of those individuals’ (Aleynikova and Mosley 2023). Asylum support starts from the day of the screening and gives people somewhere to live and a small allowance for necessities. In the next chapter there is an assessment of the extent to which this is actually adequate for asylum seekers, but here it is important to note that this support should simply be for a fleeting time while a decision is being taken, rather than extend for a prolonged period of incapacitation. As mentioned, waiting for the opportunity to work forces people to be reliant on government help. This spreads discontent among British citizens towards dependants who have come from abroad. Paradoxically, denying self-help work opportunities and delaying asylum processes affects asylum seekers and their public image rather than negatively affecting that of the state.

Until mid-2002, asylum seekers could apply for permission to work if they had been waiting six months for an initial decision on their asylum claim. The government removed that concession, saying it was necessary to distinguish asylum from economic migration and that giving people the right to work after six months incentivised economic migration in the shape of asylum seeking. A right to apply for permission to work after twelve months was introduced in 2005 to comply with the EU law of the time. The government restricted work rights further to the shortage occupation list in 2010.

It is important to note that such restrictions have been imposed and maintained by successive governments of different political hues who have all maintained that they want to prevent economic migration through this pathway. Yet it prevents people from having a dignified existence in the UK while awaiting their asylum decisions. On the issue of human dignity in the context of asylum seeking, a clear legal standard has been set in a leading case, R v Secretary of State for the Home Department ex parte Adam, Limbuela, Tesema [2005] UKHL 66 (in short, the Limbuela case). In Limbuela, three asylum seekers whose claims for asylum were deemed not to have been made as soon as is reasonably practicable following their arrival in the UK were each refused support under s55(1) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Each was successful in their application for judicial review in the Administrative Court, which was later upheld by the Court of Appeal. The Secretary of State appealed to the House of Lords but lost the appeal.

S.95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 authorised the Secretary of State to provide or arrange support for asylum seekers (and their dependants) who appeared to be destitute or likely to become so within a prescribed period, but s55(1) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act states that the claim has to be made as soon as is reasonably practicable after arrival in the UK; s55(5)(a) enabled the Secretary of State to exercise powers to provide support to protect Convention (ECHR rights).

The test for whether an applicant was destitute was set out in s95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 and covered circumstances in which a person did not have adequate accommodation or could not meet essential living needs. Although the applicants had been forced to sleep rough on the street and had limited access to food and washing facilities whilst awaiting their asylum applications the Secretary of State did not provide them any support before an ultimate state of inhuman or degrading treatment was reached. The decision by the Secretary of State to not support someone who would otherwise qualify for support under s95 of the 1999 Act because he was, or was likely to become, destitute, was wrong and the court noted that asylum seekers in this position were prohibited from employment. Where the inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment resulted from acts or omissions for which the state was solely responsible, there was an absolute obligation to refrain from such conduct.

The court held that there was no doubt that the threshold might be crossed if a late applicant for asylum with no means and no alternative source of support, unable to support themselves, was, by the deliberate action of the state, denied shelter, food or the most basic necessities of life. In the Limbuela case there was sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that due to their treatment by the Secretary of State, there was an imminent prospect that they would suffer inhuman or degrading treatment. The court noted that asylum seekers were prevented from working while their application was being processed and concluded that a failure to provide support would therefore expose the claimants to the risk of being homeless or without access to adequate food, creating an Article 3 ECHR violation.

In the next chapter, in the context of families and housing for asylum seekers, I will return to this standard (Limbuela standard) as it is unclear now with new developments in standards of asylum housing, and general care and support for asylum seekers, if even this low threshold of inhuman and degrading treatment is being met. Here in the context of work restrictions, we can see how denying adequate support further compounds vulnerability of asylum seekers who (as noted in Limbuela) have no other means to support themselves.

Civil society actors call for the ‘right to work’ for asylum seekers in the UK. For example, Lift the Ban, a coalition of 240 charities, businesses and trades unions which seeks to overturn the government’s ban on asylum seekers working, states: ‘It takes the toughest toll on people seeking asylum, but the UK economy also misses out on tax revenue and much-needed specialists’ (Refugee Action 2022). Paradoxically, people held in immigration detention who are supposed to be facing imminent deportation are permitted to work, albeit for an extremely low rate of pay (Mantouvalou 2020). They are given work roles within their detention centres and paid nominal amounts. Detainees are only paid £1 an hour, and a maximum of £30 a week (for a maximum of 30 hours a week, as Detention Services Order 01/2013 provides) for cleaning, cooking and other such roles in the centre (Home Office 2025b). This low rate of pay was challenged in R (on the application of Shola Badmus, GW, Okwudili Chinze and Granville Millington v The Secretary of State for the Home Department) in the Court of Appeal. The appellants were subject to immigration detention and undertook paid activities while detained in Brook House. They worked as cleaners and cleaning supervisors, barbers and welfare ‘buddies’ (organising legal advice surgeries, Home Office interviews for other detainees, and supporting those faced with problems), and were paid £1 an hour for their work.

For comparison purposes, there is the National Minimum Wage Act in the UK, under which there is a minimum wage set for those over 25 years old. Section 59 of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 excludes immigration detainees from minimum wage legislation. Detention Services Order 01/2013, in turn, provides that detainees should be paid £1 per hour for ‘routine work’ (cleaning, for instance), and £1.25 per hour for ‘specified projects’ (painting, for instance).

Immigration removal centres are often run by private companies who seek to maximise their profits. These companies ‘offer the opportunity’ for detainees to perform essential work for maintenance within the centres and pay them £1 per hour. With this small amount detainees cannot even afford items from the centre’s vending machines. However, the Court of Appeal held that this low rate of pay is not exploitative and did not violate human dignity. The human rights arguments were also dismissed (a violation of Article 14 of the ECHR, which prohibits discrimination), in conjunction with Article 4 (prohibition of slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour), Article 8 (right to private life), and Article 1 of Protocol 1 (the right to property). The contractors running these centres are profiting from the work of those detained as they are getting work done for amounts well below normal costs.

The case is subject to appeal to the Supreme Court, and possibly the ECtHR if domestic remedies are exhausted. It is to be hoped that the human rights arguments will be reconsidered, and that it will be recognised that detainees’ treatment both falls within the ambit of Articles 4, 8 and Article 1 of Protocol 1, and violates the Convention when taken together with the prohibition of discrimination (Mantouvalou 2020).

This exploitation of people in detention centres is linked to the wider issue of a lack of accountability when privatisation takes the place of migration control. There are numerous instances of serious abuses (rapes, use of disproportionate force and even deaths) in these centres as well as during the deportation process. While such abuses of power can happen in the hands of state agents, private operators are profit-incentivised and further removed from accountability than direct public service state authorities. Yet by privatising, the government is able to escape direct liability when things go wrong and this turns migration control into a business.

Eyes everywhere: private parties checking status and technology

Migration control, from when it commenced, was a core state action conducted by governments. Yet checking people’s status and tracking who is living in a society has now become everyone’s legal duty. This is part of a hostile environment immigration strategy which involves employers, landlords and others who have reporting duties as private individuals. Yet perhaps there is a longer track record. The co-opting of private parties goes back at least to 1793 when ship captains had to supply data about new arrivals and exits. The Registration of Aliens Act 1793 (UK), obliged ship captains to report numbers, names and occupations of foreign passengers to local port authorities upon arrival. There was a fine applicable if the captain omitted any passenger. Similarly, air carriers are also required to check documents (1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation). Within a few decades (in the late 1980s) there were sanctions placed on airlines for not checking documents properly. This was mainly because of asylum seekers who were arriving in Western Europe and the UK in the 1980s. Airlines were also drawn into the immigration detention business because they needed to report and hold passengers without documents. Hence detention centres were set up initially quite near airports (for example, Harmondsworth).

More recent developments have broadened the duty to report so that it is not limited to borders. There are companies that specialise in immigration detention. For example, detention involves private companies such as Serco and G4S running facilities which are prison-like in appearance and format, where people are sent once they are found or presumed to be present in society without regular status. So, specific sites of bordering have been extended. Private companies then run these centres for profit and exploit those who are detained in these spaces by giving them work on site for nominal amounts far below minimum wage (as mentioned above).

Immigration checks for the purposes of employment were introduced in a rudimentary form from 1996. The 1996 law was further reformed in 2006. The Home Office could now fine employers who were found to have employed a person without permission to work where the employer had not checked and kept a copy of documentary proof of immigration status. Employers became more cooperative in immigration enforcement for fear of the legal consequences of non-compliance. The success of this scheme has led to other private parties who control resources such as access to housing and healthcare being involved in similar enforcement roles. The different instruments of hostile environment enforcement are: primary legislation (the Immigration Acts 2014 and 2016), secondary legislation (for example to regulations governing National Health Service charges), bureaucratic changes (such as the embedding of immigration officials at police stations and in local authorities) and data sharing agreements between government departments (such as memorandums of understanding between the Home Office and Department for Education and the Department for Health).

Under the Immigration Act 2016 the enforcement powers of immigration officers were further strengthened to target ‘illegal working’, and the circumstances in which an employer can be found guilty of employing ‘illegal’ workers have been broadened. It is now a criminal offence to ‘employ another person knowing, or where an employer has reasonable cause to believe, that the worker is disqualified from employment by reason of their immigration status’. Whereas the prior offence required actual knowledge of illegal working, liability now arises where the employer has a ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that the worker is disqualified, a much lower threshold. Section 35(4) of the Immigration Act 2016 also increases the criminal penalty for employing persons without the right to work under section 21(4) of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006 from a maximum of three to five years’ imprisonment alongside a fine, or both (Bales 2017). Further, wages paid to such workers can be seized as proceeds of crime. Speaking in the House of Commons on 13 June 2016, the Minister for Immigration, James Brokenshire, said: ‘The Government are committed to tackling illegal working. The Immigration Act 2016 makes illegal working a criminal offence in its own right, which ensures that wages paid to illegal migrants can be seized as the proceeds of crime, and assets may be confiscated on conviction.’

In tandem with the criminal offence, and irrespective of employers’ reasonable cause to believe, ‘civil penalties’ may also be imposed upon employers employing those without the right to work. The civil penalty consists of either a £15,000 or £20,000 fine per worker depending on whether it is a repeat offence, issued by way of notice. This differs from a criminal charge as civil penalties can be issued by Immigration Enforcement without having to bring the matter before a court, or prove that the employer knew, or had reasonable cause to believe, that the individual had no right to work. Where employers are found to be employing workers without the right to work, the civil penalty can be reduced if the employer agrees to cooperate with Home Office officials. A £5,000 discount, for example, will be made where employers report ‘suspected illegal workers’ and a further £5,000 will be granted where there is evidence of ‘active cooperation’. This means most employers will find it prudent to check immigration documents and/or if they fail to discover an irregular status at first, later cooperate to mitigate the fines. These actions can be a ‘statutory excuse’, where an employer can show that they carried out the correct ‘right to work’ checks or took suitable cooperative action (for example, section 15(3) of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Act 2006). This includes the re-checking of the worker’s status where they do not have a long-term right to work in the UK. Such checks also eliminate the mens rea requirement (the requirement of a specific intent or knowledge of wrongdoing) for the criminal offence as the employer can demonstrate that they reasonably believed the individual had a right to work. Similarly, we have already seen in Chapter 2 how landlords are also drawn in through right-to-rent checks by the same Act. Not surprisingly, private companies which provide secondary document-checking services are also now flourishing. The chief advantage of spreading out state services in this manner, apart from having eyes everywhere, is that the financial burden is also shifted to private parties like employers and landlords. It is also hard to pin liability on the government under these schemes, which in effect diffuses both the control of and accountability for migration. In the workplace, technology can replace the need for state control, for example, ‘E-Verify’, a biometric system that identifies those eligible to work legally in the United States has taken over much of the bordering function (Goldstein and Alonso-Bejarano 2024).

The widespread use of technology has assisted both the internalisation and the externalisation of borders (Huysmans 2014). Internalisation is prominent in empowering detection within borders, but externalisation is also facilitated through electronic checks, offshore holding and contracting out to external agencies for keeping people offshore. Security concerns have led to the use of modern technology and companies have invested a lot of money in research and development. As a result, private companies now have facial recognition, drones and data-mining technologies for use in border control, and all of these are continuously being improved. Technological advancements can make border control more ‘efficient’ in terms of needing fewer people to administer border control, but it is less ‘accurate’ and more error prone, thereby creating more unfairness and injustice (Boswell and Besse 2023, 396).

Using automatic software for applications for entry and even automating decisions on applications can speed up backlogs but this dehumanises people, as it does not take into consideration that lives may be at stake when they cross borders or that critical opportunities may be lost. Errors can be undetectable. Affected parties become unable to effectively challenge the use of these devices and their algorithms because of a lack of records or available data. Even the bodies and physical movements of asylum seekers can be analysed to detect signs of lying or to trace accents and match to purported countries of origin, thereby bringing bordering to the physical level of monitoring (Naranjo and Molnar 2020).

The university as a workplace site of bordering and production of future workers

Another site of bordering is the provision of education in universities. Education is the link between the production of future workers as well as the site where family migration may take place if dependants of students join them from elsewhere in the world. Globally, the UK is the world’s second largest destination for international students, behind only the United States: about 12.5 per cent of all international students worldwide come to the UK for their studies (Universities UK International 2017). A massive boom in international student numbers has been driven, to a considerable degree, by the marketisation of UK international higher education. With the introduction of the Tier 4 regime in 2008 came the PBS, which led to a fundamental change in the relationship between the state, individual universities and international students in the UK. All international students coming to the UK had to have a Tier 4 visa, and in order to obtain such a visa, they had to be sponsored by an educational institution that had a state-granted Tier 4 sponsor licence. Yet visas for students and their family members are highly contentious and numerous restrictions have to be navigated in the sector. For example, in 2012 the ‘post-study work’ route was closed so that students would not be able to automatically proceed from study to work as they could in the past. They would have to find an employer willing to sponsor them for a skilled work visa or needed to qualify for another type of work visa, for example as an entrepreneur. A rebranded post-study work visa known as the Graduate Scheme was introduced in 2021 where students could continue to work with employers without needing specific sponsorship. The driving force behind this new visa scheme was to attract talent from the university sector for the UK workforce.

In 2023 it was announced that students would not be able to bring foreign family members to the UK during their studies on dependent family visas unless they were in research masters or doctoral programmes. This came into effect from 1 January 2024, and is likely to deter some applicants who would rather have brought their family members here.

Similarly, past difficulties for universities have included ensuring students have adequate language competence and that they show regular attendance in their studies. A major scandal erupted regarding the London Metropolitan University when the UK Border Agency claimed that in ‘more than a quarter’ of the sample of international students that it audited at London Metropolitan, ‘students did not have permission to stay in the country, a “significant proportion” did not have sufficient English and there was no proof that half of those sampled were turning up to lectures’, and then revoked the university’s licence as an international sponsor (Meikle 2012).

The revocation of London Metropolitan’s licence meant that over 2,500 international students then at the university suddenly no longer had valid student visas – even though the overwhelming majority of them had done absolutely nothing wrong – and these students were given sixty days by the UK Border Agency to find another university in the UK in which to enrol or they would be required to leave the country (Garner and Rawlinson 2012). Eventually, London Metropolitan University was able to appeal successfully against the UK Border Agency ruling and win its sponsorship licence back; only 153 out of the more than 2,500 international students at the university had their right to study in the UK taken away because of visa violations (Richardson 2013). However, this was a cautionary tale for other university sponsors, many of whom rely on international students to survive in the tight financial situation caused by a lack of adequate public funding.

Under the Tier 4 regime, universities have also become responsible, for the first time, for the immigration status of the international students studying on their campuses. As Geoffrey Alderman (2016) notes, the Home Office became, for the first time, a major regulator of higher education in the UK. Its annual monitoring and audits of Tier 4 sponsors, as well as its option to cancel the Tier 4 sponsor licences that give educational institutions the right to admit international students, provided the Home Office with extensive power over policy and practice throughout the higher education sector. Previously, the visa status of international students in the UK had been determined entirely between the individual student and the state, but under Tier 4, a ‘quid pro quo’ arrangement has been set up in which universities, in return for being awarded the privilege of being able to admit international students, are also given the responsibility of helping ‘to prevent the [immigration] system from being abused’ (Home Office 2025a). This means, effectively, that ‘the university … becomes an extension of the state border agency’, ‘the classroom becomes a border site, university staff become border agents’ and a ‘two tier student identity’ is constructed, as universities become legally liable for monitoring and regulating the physical presence and behaviour of international students in a way that they are not liable for regarding home students (Jenkins 2014, 265–7).

As the classroom becomes a border site, university staff become border agents, enforcing approved behaviours on students. The student body becomes divided, as these behaviours apply to only part of it, creating a two-tier student identity. Structurally, control is transferred from educational to administrative staff, who implement and regulate the monitoring and surveillance systems that the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) requires. A new requirement is made of teachers and course leaders, who must now nominate ‘contact points’. This contact must be recorded by teaching staff on behalf of administrative staff, who must manage such records on behalf of the UKBA. This entails a further ceding of power within the university from educational to administrative functions, another set of non-educational requirements which must be complied with by teaching staff. Continuing to provide education is in the interests of educational institutions but the objectives of such UKBA schemes mean that staff roles involve elements of surveillance of the student community.

Conclusion

While examining changing borders at the levels of empire (the British Empire), continent (the EU) and nation state (the UK), the control of labour migration as a key objective of migration control has emerged repeatedly as a recurrent motivation. This chapter has therefore drawn the research gaze to the workplace. It reveals that work is a Catch-22 area for most migrants. If migrants obtain work, they are vilified for taking away local jobs from local people and if they struggle to find work, they are equally reviled for being potential benefit scroungers (even if they have little or no access to public support). While concern about access to the labour market is often tied to access to welfare, most migrants spend the healthiest periods of their lives working with no recourse to public funds. Arguably this contributes to drawing the best workers away from their own economies of origin, which are usually less developed ones. Many such workers (although not all) retire when older to other economies (including the ones they originally left) and draw on the national resources of their countries of origin in their old age rather than their countries of migration. Why then should they be projected as drains on the economies of their host country and their work undervalued and restricted by a multitude of means? On the other hand, why should migrants constantly have to strive to be seen as more deserving of work and receiving asylum than others in the population?

The workplace (and its extension into other sites of bordering such as universities) is not just about employment, labour relations and people’s needs. It is also an area of immigration control. Even the most qualified migrant workers spend many years living with temporary status. While technology helps some migrants transcend borders (for example, digital nomads), others are trapped in the most extractive labour practices brought about by technology such as digital monitoring and tracking of workers.

While regulating access to the labour market as per the demands of the market and the economy, as well as the demands and privileges of business and employers, is a function of the law, this is not the whole picture. The law creates conditions where those who do not have the proper documentation cannot function and have to be reported or self-deport. The law creates conditions of precarity (especially when it is cited strategically, applied in diffuse ways and especially in conjunction with technology and corporate money), but it is also key (as we have seen in the Supreme Court regarding deportation to Rwanda) in resisting unfair, harsh and discriminatory bordering practices.

Providing safe routes for refugees means offering protection and ways of reaching the UK so that they do not have to resort to dangerous journeys; this is key to ensuring that the post-war consensus on asylum as a human right does not collapse. Enabling the right to work for asylum seekers will also be crucial to achieving a more inclusive economy and supporting stronger integration outcomes in the long run. As an influential member of the UN and a signatory to the Refugee Convention, the UK should share responsibility for protecting refugees globally. According to Bosniak (2007), we need to rethink territoriality and territorial presence, given that borders now even pre-empt arrivals. Sanctuary movements and anti-racism alliances are often based on the idea that if people are already here and become longer-term residents, they will become one of us and not remain foreign, and should therefore be treated fairly, but if borders pre-empt entry, then there is no opportunity to create those bonds of humanity at all.

Similarly, hostile environment policies seek to uproot people before they can become one of us through their long-term presence. In the case of not rescuing migrants at sea or denying them arrival rights, their humanity is simply eroded. In the next chapter it will become apparent that even the sanctuary of the private family space is often denied to migrants. There needs to be an understanding of historical and contemporary resource-hoarding by the more powerful nations at the expense of human rights, and basic human rights need to be upheld more strongly than ever before in resisting such practices.

Notes

1. 1.  ‘Get Brexit Done: Unleash Britain’s Potential’. The Conservative and Unionist Party Manifesto 2019. https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative%202019%20Manifesto.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

2. 2.  ‘Youth Mobility Scheme Visa’. https://www.gov.uk/youth-mobility. Accessed 23 October 2025.

3. 3.  HM Government Immigration White Paper May 2025. ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6821f334ced319d02c906103/restoring-control-over-the-immigration-system-web-optimised.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2025.

4. 4.  News agencies report that the period of naturalisation for becoming British is likely to become ten years, after a public consultation. This is another example of the tightening of rules that creates greater internal bordering and precarity for long-term foreign residents. See Zeffman and Morton (2025).

5. 5.  For a critique of the British citizenship process see Brooks (2016) and Prabhat (2018).

6. 6.  UK Visas and Immigration Guidance, 13 February 2025. ‘Good Character Requirement (accessible)’. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-character-nationality-policy-guidance/good-character-requirement-accessible. Accessed 20 October 2025.

7. 7.  Home Office Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act, published 22 May 2019. Last updated 31 December 2021. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/independent-review-of-the-modern-slavery-act-final-report. Accessed 20 October 2025.

8. 8.  The Real Mo Farah. Directed by Leo Burley for BBC One. Atomized Studios, 2022.