Nando Sigona

[a shorter, slightly revised version was published by The Conversation]

The premise driving the government’s latest proposals on asylum is fundamentally wrong.
Asylum is not illegal migration. Yet the policy architecture being rolled out treats it as such, collapsing two distinct categories into a single frame of threat, deterrence and control. When all asylum seekers are recast as “illegal migrants,” the system that follows is built on a distortion — and its consequences fall not on the minority who try to game the system, but on the overwhelming majority who have legitimate claims for protection.

A system shifting from protection to restriction

The new asylum measures promise faster decisions, tougher thresholds, and expanded detention and removals. The rhetoric of “restoring control” makes the direction clear: restrict access to protection, harden the conditions for claiming it, and speed up refusals. This is not the repair of a damaged system; it is its shrinking.

The central move enabling this shift is a deliberate conflation of asylum with irregular migration. Once the categories blur, policies designed for enforcement become acceptable within what should be a protection regime.

The spectre of “darker forces”

A striking feature of the current political framing is its openness. Labour is not hiding its reasoning; it explicitly argues that firmer control is needed to prevent “darker forces” from coming into power. This is presented not as a covert concession to the far right, but as a public rationale for tightening the system.

This approach shifts the centre of gravity in migration debates: once “control” becomes the primary measure of legitimacy, there is less space for discussing rights, protection, or international obligations. The message becomes: firmer control is needed to keep politics steady, not because it improves the asylum system.

Why the visa ban strategy won’t work

A key element of the new plan is the threat of visa bans on countries that refuse to take back returnees. It is presented as a decisive new lever, but it is unlikely to shift return rates for three structural reasons. Firstly, Britain no longer has the geopolitical weight it once did. For many of the countries involved, access to UK visas is already extremely restricted. Removing something that is scarcely granted offers little leverage.Some sending states are strategic or trade partners. Post-Brexit trade deals have involved visa concessions that cannot easily be reversed without undermining the broader agreements. Pressure tactics only work on smaller states — and the numbers involved are minimal. Even if successful, the impact on overall returns would be marginal.In reality, this is a symbolic policy designed to signal resolve rather than change outcomes.

Settlement eroded: from a right to a lifetime review

The asylum proposals do not stand alone. They align closely with recent announcements on migrant workers: higher salary thresholds, more enforcement, extended probationary periods, and more complex routes to settlement.

One of the most consequential shifts sits below the surface. Settlement — historically a clear, rights-based route to secure status — is being transformed into something that must be continually earned. The path becomes longer, more conditional, and more easily disrupted.

The result is a structural disadvantage built into the system: non-citizens can live, work and contribute, but their belonging remains conditional. They become long-term residents on a form of probation, their status always open to review. This is more than an administrative change; it creates a hierarchy of membership that shapes lives, futures and families.

For those familiar with Britain’s colonial history, this logic has echoes. The empire relied on graded rights, conditional mobility, and differential access to belonging — distinctions that determined who could remain, who could move, and who could claim full membership.

Countering a politics of fear

The issue is not simply that the proposals are harsh, unethical or ineffective. It is the deeper shift they represent: a politics of control that narrows the boundary of belonging and redefines protection as a discretionary favour rather than a legal obligation.

If asylum continues to be framed as illegality, and settlement continues to be reshaped as a privilege that must never stop being earned, then our understanding of equal membership is fundamentally altered.

We need to recover a rights-based understanding of asylum and a understanding of migration that starts from the premise that protection is a legal duty and that lawful presence should mean security, not permanent precarity.

The alternative is a system that punishes the vulnerable, misleads the public and recreates old hierarchies in modern form. A politics of belonging is possible — but only if we stop letting fear define the boundaries of who deserves protection and who gets to belong.

“Barely inside”, by Nando Sigona, Chatgpt & Suno AI, 2025