In the past week the report, Sea Change in Border Control, by Thom Brooks of Durham University Law School, blamed Brexit for the rise in the number of small boats crossing the Channel. The report has received considerable publicity. While there is evidence that Brexit is having an impact on small boat crossings, the migration data does not support Brooks’ analysis. Rather, it suggests that Brexit-related labour shortages with the potential for exploitation, is more significant.
Flawed reasoning in the report
Brooks claims that ending the Dublin III arrangements, which allowed the UK to send asylum seekers back to the first safe EU country through which they had travelled, has led to the rise in small boat crossings. His argument is premised on the rise in the numbers occurring firstly as the withdrawal agreement was passed into law, and then rising again as the end of the transition period came into force. This reasoning is flawed, confusing correlation with causation and ignoring other evidence that better explains the rising numbers.
The report’s major weakness is the starting assumption that the cessation of the Dublin III arrangements had a major impact on small boat crossings. Brooks states that the increases in asylum seekers crossing the Channel began in 2018 with the withdrawal agreement and the rise accelerated after the end of the transition phase at the end of 2020. While the patterns broadly correspond with these Brexit-related events, Brexit is not the primary reason for them, and the link is coincidental and tenuous.
Having pre-determined that the cessation of Dublin II is the cause, Brooks then attempts to use the data to demonstrate this and does not consider other factors with greater explanatory power.
Sea Change in Border Control report
Brooks correctly states that there is no record of claims for asylum from people arriving in small boats prior to 2017 or before. The numbers have risen from 299 in 2018 to 45,766 in 2022 and he provides an almost vertical graph to demonstrate this rise. The past two years (post-Brexit) account for 87.5% of the crossings since 2018 and the boats carry many more passengers – on average there were ten people per boat in 2018 and now there are 40.
He also correctly states that in 2018, “more than half of those in small boats were Iranian (30%) or Iraqi (22%). Others included Eritrean (10%), Syrian (9%) and Afghan (5%). This has changed for 2022. In the first nine months, the largest groups were from Albania (35%) and Afghanistan (15%) followed by Iran (11%) and Iraq (10%)”. The numbers of Albanians are now significantly higher (to be discussed later) but his point remains that the demography of those crossing the Channel has changed and includes many more Albanians than previously.
He asserts that the increase in numbers is Brexit driven:
“We can best understand what to do about small boat crossings if we understand its primary cause. This chapter considers the impact of the UK’s having a return policy while an EU member and then ending this agreement post-Brexit. The Report examines the impact this change has had on irregular migration to the UK – and the Government’s failure to foresee these consequences, notwithstanding repeated warnings over several years.”
A rise in boat crossings
Brooks traces the rise in the number of boat crossings from the withdrawal agreement passed in 2018: “The problem of small boat crossings began in the second half of that year with 80% of the crossings in taking place in October, November and December 2018 after the Act was passed. These crossings amounted to only about 2% of irregular migration in 2018. Small boats grew to 11% in 2019 and exploded to 83% in 2020 and 90% in 2021 of all irregular migration.”
At the time of the withdrawal agreement the UK government still hoped to have access to the relevant EU asylum application databases and to institute a returns agreement, bilaterally if not across the EU. Throughout 2020, bilateral agreements were still a possibility, depending on the final deal the UK was able to secure with the EU.
That final deal stopped just short of ‘no-deal’ and precluded the UK being treated in any other way than as a third country. There is nothing to suggest in all the asylum commentary around this time that any refugees in the camps in Calais thought Brexit should accelerate their plans to cross the Channel.
What really caused this rise in numbers?
Other environmental factors suggest that the rise in the number of small boats from 2018 had an entirely different cause. The UK government began building impenetrable inspection and lorry parks in 2016 at Calais and other ports. Over time the access roads were also fenced and secured, making it almost impossible for people to get onto lorries within several miles of the ports. Once vehicles were checked, they entered a secure parking compound. The impact of these changes took effect by 2018.
Additionally, prior to the change, those seeking asylum in the UK did not do so at a port but were often found trapped in lorries or dumped on motorways further inland, while those being trafficked or smuggled were delivered to their destination which might be anywhere in the UK. The UK government was unable to count the number of people entering the UK in this manner and did not do so, reliably.
The report also maintains that the drop in irregular migration by air since 2019, with the biggest dip in 2020, is further evidence of the Brexit effect. But this drop is almost entirely due to Covid and the cessation of air travel. Even when air travel started again, there was a long period when it was much reduced and many refugee-generating countries were closed.
For example, those fleeing Ecuador or Venezuela (the number of citizens fleeing Venezuela was particularly large in in 2019) were simply unable to get to the UK in 2020 and while air traffic was curtailed or reduced, the government changed the visa requirements for people from those countries where the risk of an asylum claim was high.
The UK rarely used the Dublin III agreement
Prior to Brexit, the UK was able to return asylum seekers who had passed through another safe country. The Dublin III agreement also enabled refugee children and some other family members in an EU country to have their claims heard in the UK and to join family members here. But other than in the last six months of the transition period, the UK did not use the Dublin III arrangements very much.
In fact, under Dublin III the UK was a net recipient. Between 2015 and 2018, 2,365 people were transferred into the UK and 1,395 were transferred out. The European Council Asylum Database states that, anecdotally, there was an upsurge in applications immediately prior to the end of the transition period, as the UK attempted to remove as many people as possible before the deadline.
In 2019, before the UK left the EU, there were only 263 removals and few removals (because of Covid) early in 2020. The UK had accepted asylum applications from most of those who arrived from Europe except those whose application was in the process of being determined by another EU country.
UK accepts very few refugees
While in the EU, the UK resisted any attempts to take its fair share of refugees in Europe and along with Hungary, rejected, outright, quotas. Had it pursued Dublin III, which it was entitled to do, it would have only exacerbated relations with the EU on asylum matters. The UK government was aware of this and probably considered accepting (for a decision) all those who had passed through a safe country was a small price to pay.
Were we in the EU now, this dilemma would remain. The UK still takes only a small proportion of refugees arriving in Europe via the Mediterranean (5%, compared to France’s 15%) and comparatively very few from Ukraine. It is likely that re-joining the EU (or any other new arrangement for returns) would have to be accompanied by the UK being prepared to step up and meet its European responsibilities and take its share of refugees. Any returns agreement would have a price attached that the UK appears to be unwilling to pay.
The deterrent effect
Brooks acknowledges that the number or returns was small but maintains that the UK’s incapacity to return asylum seekers across the Channel, may have acted as a pull factor while Dublin III may have acted as a deterrent. This might merit more research and understanding but at present there is little evidence that any punitive deterrent measures have any impact on asylum journeys.
Additionally, Brooks maintains that the government failed to anticipate the deterrent effect and made no arrangements to replicate it. This is not the case. The new immigration rules, in place and applicable from our day of departure from the EU, introduced the policy of sending asylum applicants back to the first safe country if this could be arranged or “any other country that would have them”. Plans to by-pass the need for a returns policy were already being developed by the Home Office. Rwanda was their preferred option.
Since 2020, the immigration rules permit that the asylum claims of those who have passed through a safe country (i.e. almost all of them) are disallowed until processes (which are not to be exhausted before six months) are followed to seek transfer to the home country, a safe transit country or a third country. The government has been unsuccessful in this endeavour but the threat of it, and the six-month delay built into the application system, has not proved to be the deterrent.
The government also brought in measures (albeit, yet unimplemented) to put pressure on countries such as France to accept returnees by threatening to restrict visas for their nationals.
Small boats, Albanians and Dublin III
The UK’s acceptance of Albanians as suffering from slavery and exploitation and for whom a return home would lead to persecution and violence has fluctuated over the years and is discussed more fully here, but the government policies that have driven these changes are unrelated to EU membership.
It is highly unlikely that Albanians would be returned to an EU country under Dublin III arrangements (and the UK did not do so when we were members of the EU) when there is a returns agreement with Albania, and Albania is considered by the UK government to be a safe country. It is easier to return Albanians to Tirana than it is to Paris.
Albanians now amount to nearly 50% of small boat crossings and can mostly account for the rise in the number crossing last year. So, a return of Dublin III, or similar, would have little impact on overall numbers.
Brexit as a driver
It is my contention that leaving the EU has had very little impact on asylum seekers and refugees and I have previously discussed this in the Yorkshire Bylines ‘impacts of Brexit’ series. Brexit may have been envisaged as a means to implement more easily the UK’s ‘hostile environment’ policies, just as leaving the European Court of Human Rights may be considered necessary for its implementation now, but the substantive policies (hostile environment, control over borders and reducing immigration) predate Brexit and were not caused by Brexit.
Having said that, Brexit has had an impact on small boat crossings. In the ‘impacts of Brexit’ piece referred to above and in another piece on the rise in the number of Albanians crossing the Channel I discuss the impact more fully.
The UK has always been highly dependent on exploited labour, a continuum from below minimum wage pay through to slave labour. This too pre-dates Brexit, particularly the exploitation of immigrants and poorly documented labour.
Since Brexit, however, there have been acute labour shortages, particularly in health, social care, hospitality, construction and agriculture. Europeans who may previously have come to the UK and who have a choice of 29 other countries in which to live and work have elected not to return to the UK’s hostile environment. Government measures to fill the gaps have failed, and many businesses have folded as a result.
Many businesses have filled the labour gaps with exploited immigrant labour – asylum seekers who are held destitute in ‘hotels’ are ripe for exploitation, as are Ukrainians seeking sponsorship in the UK, and immigrants who can be smuggled or trafficked into the UK. The rise in the number of Albanians crossing the Channel in small boats is only partially driven by persecution or blood feuds in Albania. Much of it is (and always has been) driven by destitution, and exploitation and slavery for which there is a market in the UK.
Changing patterns of migration
The migration patterns of displaced people – from war, persecution, environmental catastrophe, societal breakdown or some other reason – are complex and changing. There is considerable misunderstanding and harmful misinformation about the nature of those fleeing and their motivations and their decision to try and reach the UK.
It is important that we understand better the changing patterns and their implications and do not over-simplify what is a complex issue. Brexit is having an impact on cross Channel flows of asylum seekers and migrants, but Dublin III is a red herring and a returns agreement with the EU, even if it were possible, would not address the problems.
