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Published in:
The EU Migration System and Global Justice: An Introduction Read chapter Read first chapter

2021 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

3. The Immigration Policy of The United Kingdom: British Exceptionalism and the Renewed Quest for Control

Author : Antonio Zotti

Published in: The EU Migration System of Governance

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter examines the UK’s immigration and asylum policy, pointing out the rationales underlying each phase of its development throughout the years, and how they relate to the ongoing transformation of the European Union Migration System of Governance—as well as the yet-to-be-determined post-Brexit relationships between the European Union and the country. In investigating the degree to which the UK’s policy complies with the conceptions of justice considered in this book—non-domination, impartiality and mutual recognition—the chapter will investigate the logic of Britain’s ‘quest for control’ of its borders and the make-up of its population, its distinctive attitude towards the Union’s and the international regime of refugee protection, as well as prospects for the country’s future participation in the System of Governance.

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previous chapter The EU’s Normative Ambivalence and the Migrant Crisis: (In) Actions of (In) Justice
next chapter Migration, Asylum Policy and Global Justice in Greece
Footnotes
1
The withdrawal of the UK from the EU was officially campaigned for by the comparatively moderate ‘Vote Leave’, a cross-party group consisting of the Eurosceptic groups Conservatives for Britain (including most of the Conservative Party’s Members of Parliament supporting the withdrawal—almost half of them), Labour Leave and Business for Britain. The other Leave organization was Grassroots Out/Leave.EU, which endorsed the UK Independence Party, part of the Conservative Party, plus a handful of Labour MPs and the Democratic Unionist Party. The ‘Remainer’ camp, on the other hand, acted through the ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ organization, bringing together businessmen, the Labour ‘In for Britain’ campaign and MPs from the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Green parties. According to Hobolt (2016), from the outset of the campaign, the battle lines were starkly drawn up by the two sides: the economy versus immigration. Vasilopoulou (2016), on the other hand, while pointing out the great overlap in the arguments of the two Leave campaigns (the economic cost of membership, its effects thwarting Britain’s ambitions as a world leader and the unfair migration policy it implicated), finds Grassroots Out/Leave.EU more focused on migration. On 23 June 2016, 51.9% of British voters cast their ballot in favour of withdrawing from the EU.
 
2
According to Eurosceptics, to represent a threat would be (or better, would have been) not only a technocratic supranational polity, but also the very European-ness, as Europe is seen as the mother lode of warmongering, authoritarianism and extremism—as opposed to Britain’s allegedly innate disposition for liberty and democracy (Spiering 2004; Wellings and Baxendale 2015).
 
3
One of the most eminent cases is that of the 200,000 Asians expelled in 1968 from Kenya, left stateless after the UK (and India) refused their entry: Britain not only refused to abide by the 1951 Convention, but also disavowed any obligations towards people who had been until recently British citizens by imposing immigration controls (no matter what the reason for entering the country) on all British passport holders without at least one parent born, naturalised or registered in Britain as a citizen of Britain or its colonies—de facto favouring the entry of white Commonwealth citizens only.
 
4
The Labour Party remained highly divided on membership in the EC until its heavy defeat in the 1983 general election, which was run on a platform which included commitment to withdrawing from the EC.
 
5
Asylum seekers are generally counted in British statistics as a subset of migrants and are included in official estimates of migrant stocks and flows. See Sturge (2020).
 
6
Independent (2015), ‘Theresa May’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference’, 6 October. Available at https://​www.​independent.​co.​uk/​news/​uk/​politics/​theresa-may-s-speech-to-the-conservative-party-conference-in-full-a6681901.​html.
 
7
Minister of State for Immigration; Minister of State for Care Services; Minister of State for Employment; Minister of State for Government Policy, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury; Minister of State for Housing and Local Government; Minister of State for Schools; Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs; Minister of State for Universities and Science; Minister of State for Justice; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health; Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport.
 
8
Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union – PROTOCOLS – Protocol (No 19) on the Schengen, Official Journal, 115, 0290–0292 (09/05/2008).
 
10
The Qualification Directive, the Procedures Directive, the Reception Conditions Directive and the Dublin and Eurodac Regulations.
 
11
BBC (2018), ‘Boris Johnson challenged over Brexit business “expletive”‘, 26 June. Available at https://​www.​bbc.​com/​news/​uk-politics-44618154.
 
12
Calais, together with Dunkerque, serves as an immigration control zone operated by the British police force on French soil (the French police do the same in Dover), as per the 2003 Le Touquet Treaty, a reciprocal arrangement between Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom whereby border controls on certain cross-Channel routes take place before boarding the train or ferry, rather than upon arrival after disembarkation. In practice, the British authorities have the primary interest in this arrangement, as it enables them to block irregular migration from the continent. If a person is refused entry to the UK, or is found seeking to enter Britain clandestinely, they are handed over to the French authorities, to be processed under French law. The treaty also specifically provides that asylum claims are the responsibility of the state of departure, not the state running the control zone—so France is responsible for all asylum claims made in Calais, even to UK officials (Ryan 2016). In August 2016, there were an estimated 10,000 migrants living in dire humanitarian conditions in the large tent cities erected in Calais and nearby, with the largest groups coming from Afghanistan and Sudan.
 
13
The reference is to Conservative Member of Parliament Enoch Powell’s infamous 1968 speech in which he attacked mass immigration, comparing the growth of the country’s minority population to “watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre” (Friedersdorf 2018).
 
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Metadata
Title
The Immigration Policy of The United Kingdom: British Exceptionalism and the Renewed Quest for Control
Author
Antonio Zotti
Copyright Year
2021
Book
The EU Migration System of Governance

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-53996-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-53997-9

Copyright Year: 2021

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53997-9_3

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