We, Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment, scholars and researchers in many universities and research centres, specialising in studying issues of migration, racism and belonging – call upon the British government to reverse the dangerous changes announced on 17 November in the government paper Restoring Order and Control: A statement on the government’s asylum and returns policy.

For many years now, consecutive legislative and rule changes on immigration legislation has gradually forced British citizens to become unpaid and untrained borderguards, making the lives of  migrants far  more precarious, deprived and dangerous.

However, the proposed legislation goes even further. Equating the seeking of asylum  with illegality and making the lives of asylum seekers and their families precarious and uncertain  for a prolonged period undermines the notion of asylum.  Furthermore, it eliminates any sense of stability and certainty of life, not only for“irregular” migrants but also for those with refugee status who have lived in the UK most of their lives. In so doing,  it erases any pretence of adherence to universal human rights and values of humanity and care.. The nativist politics of belonging, which regards anyone who does not ‘belong’ as a threat needing to be expelled,  is a position that used to be held only by the extreme Right. However, it -has now become mainstream, shared not only by the Conservatives and Reform, but also by the Labour government. They justify this policy as a mechanism for addressing the deep and fractious social fragmentation that has come to define contemporary British society. We, as social scientists, can confidently state that such racialised policies will  only deepen the divisions in British society.

–Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment, 19 November 2025

Supported by Migration Mobilities Bristol (Bristol University), the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (UEL), Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity (IRIS, University of Birmingham), Institute of Place, Environment and Society (Heriot-Watt University), Institute for Social Policy, Housing and Equalities Research (I-SPHERE, Heriot-Watt University), Department of Languages and Intercultural Studies (LINCS, Heriot-Watt University).