Migration to the UK after Brexit: policy, politics and public opinion
Think tank: UK in a Changing Europe
Author(s): Various authors
July 11, 2024
This report from UK think tank UK in a Changing Europe looks ahead at the choices for the next government.
Immigration, while far less salient than it was in 2016, is becoming a key political and policy issue again.
This report not only analyses what has changed in terms of both outcomes and public opinion but considers how a future government might respond to the issue of migration, and the kinds of tradeoffs they will have to address. The report, which brings together authors from British Future, the Institute for Government, the Migration Observatory, the Social Market Foundation, and the KCL Policy Institute, among others, provides a comprehensive review of changes in policy, outcomes, and public opinion that have reshaped the landscape.
The report shows the next government faces a number of challenges as the large post-Covid spike in arrivals has pushed immigration to the top of the political agenda again.
Numbers peaked at the end of 2022, with 1.15 million long-term international migrants (those planning to stay at least a year) arriving in the UK over the previous 12 months, although net migration is likely to fall very sharply over the course of 2024. A new model for ‘humanitarian migration’ has emerged in the years since Brexit, with large inflows of migrants fleeing conflict in Ukraine and political oppression in Hong Kong.
With a range of expert contributors, the report looks ahead at the choices for the next government, covering integration, asylum, the role of AI in helping us understand public views on immigration, humanitarian migration routes, student migration, economic migration, the legacy of the Windrush scandal, and much more.
