Posted by ccld201
25 March 2025Recent weeks have seen a surge in immigration raids in the UK targeting workers lacking permission to work, referred to derogatorily as ‘illegal migrants,’ alongside broadcasting of deportation footage that has been condemned as an ‘act of performative cruelty.’ This post examines these actions against the background of a group of UK immigration policies known as the ‘hostile environment,’ which were mainly introduced through legislation passed in 2014 and 2016. They aimed to make life in the UK unsustainable for irregular migrants (namely those lacking the correct authorisation to remain or work in the country) through restrictions on access to work, benefits and public services and putting the burden on individuals to prove their legal status.[1] Hostile environment measures include direct criminalisation of work by irregular migrants and expanded data sharing by public authorities, including labour inspection bodies, with immigration enforcement, described as ‘deputising immigration control’ by co-opting an array of public and private bodies into immigration functions.[2] Although these policies were renamed the ‘compliant environment’ in the wake of the 2018 Windrush scandal, this was not a change of substance, since most restrictions remained intact.
In this post, drawing on my 2024 article[3] on the subject alongside subsequent developments, I examine the gendered effect of the hostile environment on migrant women, focusing on two main areas: susceptibility to domestic abuse, and rights at work. I argue that the UK’s human rights commitments require greater action to protect women regardless of migration status, and examine the prospects for such progressive change under the Labour government elected in 2024.
Hostile environment policies, migrant women, and domestic abuse
Under hostile environment data sharing policies, migrant women who experience domestic abuse are often deterred from reporting because of the risk that this will expose them to immigration enforcement, which could in turn lead to detention or deportation. Organisations supporting domestic abuse survivors have raised longstanding concerns that the police’s practice of sharing data with the Home Office deters survivors without a secure migration status from reporting crime.[4] However, the Conservative government repeatedly declined to act on these warnings.
The most recent clear opportunity for change came in 2024, during the passage of the Victims and Prisoners Act, which addressed the rights of those affected by criminal conduct. In April 2024, the House of Lords voted by 214 to 208 in favour of an amendment to the Bill that would have created a firewall to prevent public services including the police and social care from reporting migrant victims to immigration enforcement. There was extensive evidence, including from the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, on the necessity of a firewall and secure ways to report abuse, without which migrant women fear that reporting will jeopardise their position. Despite this, the Conservative government rejected this amendment, claiming that it would be ‘inappropriate to impose a blanket restriction’, missing an important opportunity to protect migrant women.
Rights at work and protection from harassment
Hostile environment measures are damaging for the protection of migrant workers, making them more susceptible to exploitation, including by directing those with irregular status into less visible and regulated sectors of the labour market where labour rights violations are widespread. Furthermore, these policies impact a broader group than just irregular migrants: a recent research project I worked on alongside NGOs and other academics found that, by creating a culture of fear, even those workers with a valid visa are made to feel fearful about reporting mistreatment at work.
These effects are pronounced for migrant women, particularly given their concentration into low-paid and poorly regulated sectors of the labour market such as care, domestic work, and cleaning. The restrictive visa schemes for these sectors put migrant women at risk of losing their status and becoming subject to the hostile environment. Since 2012, the Overseas Domestic Worker Visa has been limited to a six-month non-renewable period, creating a high risk of irregularity. More recently, in 2022, the government extended the Health & Care Worker visa, previously limited to higher paid roles, to cover care workers with a salary of £20,480 pa. For an employer-sponsored visa holder, the process for changing jobs is cumbersome, requiring the worker to find a new licenced sponsoring employer within 60 days and pay a new fee, failing which they will fall into irregularity. A particular problem has arisen for thousands of migrant care workers whose employers have had their licences revoked by the Home Office, leaving them at risk of deportation unless they can meet these stringent requirements.
In general, restrictive immigration policies make it much more difficult for workers to challenge exploitation and abuse at work, including sexual harassment, since they risk falling into irregular status if they lose a role. For those with irregular status, it is even more difficult to take action against harassment – with some perpetrators deliberately taking advantage of this situation because they know their victims risk deportation if they speak out.[5]
Human rights obligations require action to protect migrant women
The impacts of the hostile environment on migrant women at work are contrary to longstanding obligations under international and regional human rights law, which include the right to decent work (Article 7, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) and the prohibition on forced or compulsory labour (Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)). The European Court of Human Rights has also recognised state failings in responding to domestic violence as violating ECHR rights including Articles 3 (the prohibition on torture and inhuman and degrading treatment) and 8 (the right to a private and family life).[6] Additionally, in 2022 the UK ratified two specialist instruments that underscore its obligation to protect all women against gendered harm, irrespective of migration status. The first of these is the Istanbul Convention, a Council of Europe instrument, which requires necessary measures for the rights of ‘everyone, particularly women, to live free from violence,’ which is to be secured without discrimination on any ground, including migration status. On ratification, the UK entered a reservation to its Article 59, which requires an autonomous residence permit to be granted where a victim of abuse loses their immigration status due to a relationship ending. This shows a limitation of its approach, but does not detract from the broader obligation to protect all migrant women. Secondly, in ratifying the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment, the UK accepted the obligation to protect all those in the world of work regardless of contractual status or formality (Article 2) and to address violence and harassment in national policies concerning migration (Article 11). This should create renewed impetus momentum repealing policies that make migrant women susceptible to violations of their rights.
The new government: a chance to step up protection
To date, the Labour government elected in July 2024 has not taken steps to remove hostile environment policies. Its recently introduced Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has some positive aspects, such as scrapping the plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, but does little to extend necessary protection to migrant women. It also reinforces many aspects of the anti-migrant agenda, for example through extended detention powers and limits on support for survivors of trafficking.
Yet other aspects of the government’s agenda should be seen as an impetus to improve protection of migrant women against abuse in the home and the workplace. For example, in its manifesto commitment to halve violence against women, Labour committed to ‘use every government tool available to target perpetrators and address the root causes of abuse and violence.’ Making this a reality requires a universalistic approach in which irregular migrant women have a viable route to a secure status, but can also report abuse without fear it will lead to their deportation. In addition, government plans for a Fair Work Agency aim to tackle labour exploitation more effectively through a unified approach to enforcement. To meet these aims, it should take a proactive approach to enforcement that includes random audits of workplaces and establish a firewall between labour inspectorates and immigration enforcement, to allow workers to feel safe reporting abuse irrespective of their immigration status.
Dr Natalie Sedacca is Assistant Professor in Employment Law at Durham University. Her research focuses on human rights and labour law, with a particular interest in domestic workers and other marginalised workers, and in issues of gender and migration. Her monograph ‘Human Rights and the Protection of Domestic Workers’ is forthcoming with Oxford University Press.
Image details: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
[1] Frances Webber, ‘On the Creation of the UK’s “Hostile Environment”’ (2019) 60 Race & Class 76; Wendy Williams, ‘Windrush Lessons Learned Review’ (House of Commons 2020) HC 93.
[2] Melanie Griffiths and Colin Yeo, ‘The UK’s Hostile Environment: Deputising Immigration Control’ [2021] Critical Social Policy 0261018320980653, 525.
[3] Natalie Sedacca, ‘Migrant Work, Gender and the Hostile Environment: A Human Rights Analysis’ (2024) 53 Industrial Law Journal 63.
[4] Cathy McIlwaine, Lucila Granada and Illary Valenzuela-Oblitas, ‘The Right to Be Believed: Migrant Women Facing Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) in the “hostile Immigration Environment” in London’ (King’s College London and the Latin American Women’s Rights Service 2019).
[5] Focus on Labour Exploitation, ‘Position Paper: Tackling Sexual Harassment in Low Paid and Insecure Work’ (Focus on Labour Exploitation 2022) 16–17.
[6] Sedacca (n 3) 81–90.