Migration

The International Labour Organisation estimates that there are 40 million men, women and children globally who are victim to modern slavery on any given day. Today, the issue of modern slavery is commanding increasing levels of international attention, with the UK government positioning itself as a ‘global leader’ in the fight for its eradication. However, while the UK government characterises modern slavery as caused by exploitative criminal groups, the issue ultimately has deeper structural roots.

Britain’s prioritisation of modern slavery

‘Modern slavery’ is a fairly new term within British political discourse. Having evolved from the older term of ‘human trafficking’, it was first given substance by the 2014 Modern Slavery Strategy and is defined as encompassing “slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking”. The Home Office estimates that there are between 10,000 and 13,000 potential victims of modern slavery in the UK, and government expenditure on this issue has grown rapidly in recent years. In 2017/18 an estimated £39 million was spent, and this figure is projected to rise to a high of £61 million in 2018/19.

The UK government characterises modern slavery through the lens of organised crime, and places the blame firmly upon the organised criminal networks that exploit vulnerable victims for their own financial gain. The acts of these criminal networks are defined in the Government’s 2014 report with the moralistic language of manipulation and abuse: “traffickers and slave drivers coerce, deceive and force individuals against their will into a life of abuse, servitude and inhumane treatment”. This conceptualisation of the issue – and the powerful language used to describe it – directs the state into a particular form of response, one which mobilises the weight of the criminal justice system and the British enforcement apparatus, including the National Crime Agency (NCA), the police and the Home Office. A key piece of legislation in this battle was the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, which Prime Minister Theresa May claimed created “tough new penalties to put slave masters behind bars where they belong”.

Addressing structural drivers

Whilst understandable, this characterisation is problematic as it diverts attention from a more pressing reality, namely that the exploitation that defines modern slavery is itself embedded into the structure of the UK’s restrictive immigration regime. At its core, modern slavery is defined by exploitation, whether that be physical or psychological, cultural or social. A prerequisite of exploitation is an imbalance of power, and the UK immigration system, including the ‘hostile environment’ strategy pursued by the Home Office, contributes to the emergence of these imbalances.

The UK immigration system is highly restrictive for low-skilled labour, and as such it is difficult for these individuals to obtain legitimate working visas. Low-skilled migrants are hence pushed underground into illegal employment, working in restaurants, on building sites and as cleaners. Their status puts these workers in a precarious position as they are not covered by the legal employment guarantees that ensure a base level of worker protection. In the absence of legal protection, power imbalances can easily transform a case of illegal working into one of modern slavery, when, for example, an employer forces an individual to work with little or no pay or to work when sick, or engages in sustained physical or verbal abuse.

Beyond this, there is a further coercive mechanism that prolongs exploitation, namely that the result of escape from an abusive situation can often lead to removal from the country. The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the body within the Home Office responsible for handling cases of modern slavery. Once a referral is made to this body, an investigation is initiated and a positive or negative decision is reached on whether an individual is a ‘confirmed victim’. Crucially, neither decision entails a permission to stay in the UK, with confirmed victims only being offered a 45 day ‘move-on’ period in which, in the absence of other leave entitlements, they must depart the country. Where the alternative to exploitation is removal from the UK, this creates a structural disincentive for victims of modern slavery to escape their abusive situations.

Reframing the causes

The Government’s discourse characterises modern slavery as an issue of organised crime, the blame for which rests with the criminals who exploit others for their own financial gain. This discourse hides a deeper reality, that the UK’s restrictive immigration regime and the Home Office’s policies create the conditions through which exploitation – and, ultimately, modern slavery – proliferate. It is therefore difficult to resist the conclusion that the responsibility for modern slavery cannot be solely attributed to criminals and the organised crime groups they populate; the Government itself and the policies it enacts also share in moral culpability.

Oliver Goodman is a graduate student in Migration Studies at the University of Oxford.

The privatisation of immigration detention in the UK symbolises a policy shift from restricting movement due to nationalist concerns to extracting financial value from migrants. Today, seven of the nine Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) in the UK are outsourced to private companies. Mitie, G4S, Serco and GEO receive Government contracts worth £243 million a year. The growing political influence of the immigration ‘security’ lobby has been accompanied by allegations of severe abuse of vulnerable detainees, cost-cutting measures and a nebulous lack of accountability.

Within the framework of the Private Finance Initiative, private companies running immigration detention centres in the UK claim that they are better equipped to deliver specialised services efficiently than the state. There has, however, been no concrete proof that privatisation is better value for money. In contrast, the privatisation of immigration detention means big business. From 2010 to 2014, outsourced contracts between the National Offender Management Service and G4S and Sercor accounted for more than 70% of NOMS’ 2.5 billion budget. Mitie, after taking over Harmondsworth and Colnbrook IRCs near Heathrow Airport in 2014, experienced an increase in annual profits from £333,000 to £2 million as it secured a Home Office (HO) contract worth £180 million over an 8-year period. Although some contracts might not be as profitable, they still provide a steady, state-backed, low-risk income. Private contractors receive on average £92 per detainee daily (£34,000 per detainee annually).

Clearly, the growing hostility of the British immigration system is influenced by the financial interests of private sector companies. Private contractors, moreover, employ 1.2 million people in austerity Britain, which only increases the political capital of the migration ‘security’ lobby. The entanglement of private companies and the public sector have made the big security firms ‘too big to fail’ as outsourcing reinforces the Government’s dependence on private corporations. This trend is increasingly worrying because the corporate endeavour to increase profit margins is accompanied by allegations of extreme violence at detention sites, cost-cutting measures, hardening penal laws and a lack of accountability.

Due to private sector interests, the bottom line of a company now is what counts in immigration detention. The strict management of detention facilities is ensured by recruiting senior staff who worked in prisons or the military before joining the ranks of private contractors like G4S, the world’s biggest security company whose portfolio includes security services in Guantánamo. To reduce running costs in labour-intensive IRCs, the number of junior staff is decreased. Serious staffing issues have been reported at Colnbrook IRC since Mitie took over a contract whose value was reduced by 30% while demanding the same service. Unsurprisingly, Mitie has been accused of aggressive cost-cutting practices.

The HO, nevertheless, continues to shed responsibility and dismiss reports of abuse. In 2008, a dossier of 300 alleged assaults at IRCs was collected by an NGO coalition but did not provoke any response from the HO. When Jimmy Mubenga was killed during his forced removal from the UK in 2010, the G4S guards were acquitted of manslaughter despite their racist messaging. Mitie’s CEO justified a large fire in Campsfield IRC in 2013 by claiming the HO had not instructed the contractor to install water sprinklers. The Global Detention Project details numerous cases of sexual assault and harassment at Yarl’s Wood IRC, which received limited attention when two Serco staff members were suspended in 2015. These reports have critics wondering whether the Government deliberately benefits from blurred lines of accountability to shed responsibility.

Despite high-profile failures of private companies, a serious investigation of privatised immigration detention seems impossible. Private companies delivering public services are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act and their Government contracts are protected from public scrutiny by ‘commercial confidentiality’. CorporateWatch questioned the integrity of the ‘self-audit’ system between private firms and the HO in 2014. Since 2013, G4S and Serco have been under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office for overcharging the Government on electronic monitoring contracts. After paying £109m and announcing a ‘corporate renewal plan’, G4S was however awarded further contracts. The Government also reached a £70.5m settlement with Serco, which has additionally been investigated by the Financial Reporting Council since 2016. Recently, Bail for Immigration Detainees initiated a judicial review to officially brand G4S a “High Risk” supplier to hold the global outsourcing company accountable.

In conclusion, treating immigration detention as a profitable business is clearly dangerous for detainees and undermines accountability. Despite severe failures of private companies, as well as numerous judicial reviews, the lack of accessible information and accountability complicate a genuine investigation of outsourced immigration detention. To improve conditions in the short term, G4S, Serco, mitie and GEO must submit to systematic, public oversight but in the long run the privatisation of immigration detention in the UK must end to enable the fundamental reform of a failing system.

Josefine Brons studies Politics and International Relations at SOAS University of London.

The UK has the largest immigration detention system in Europe, and the numbers of persons detained in British immigration removal centres (IRCs) continues to increase. This year, events such as the hunger strike of detainees in Yarls Wood IRC in late February have captured public attention because they revealed some of the major points of contention regarding this regime today. More than a simple set of issues, these points uncover a rationale that needs to be reconsidered.

Immigration detention is a government practice where asylum seekers or other migrants are detained on grounds of needing to establish their identities, or to facilitate their claims resolution or their removal. It is administrative procedure rather than a criminal one. Border enforcement officials may detain migrants upon arrival; when being presented to an immigration officer; after an arrest or a prison sentence; and when a decision to remove the migrant has been made. However, there is a lack of information on the Home Office’s discretionary decisions on when and who to arrest and detain.

There has been a tenfold increase in the number of detainees between 1993 and 2012, and there have been approximately 3,000 migrants detained at any given time between 2009 and 2017. The 30,000 people who spend varying lengths of time in detention each year tend to be from former British colonies (South Asian countries and Sub-Saharan African countries by mid-2018). However, accurate data on detained persons is hardly available due to the complicated trajectories which could have led to a person being detained.

The most publicly criticised issue about immigration detention is the lack of a time limit. The UK has refused to institute a statutory time limit to detention and is thus the only state in the European Union without a legal detention time-limit. In 2016, around 81% of detainees were kept for two months or less. However, around 2% were in detention for 6 to 12 months, with another 1% kept for longer than a year.

Allowing for an open-ended detention period has no direct relationship with the ‘legitimate aims’ of immigration detention, which is to facilitate the processing of unclear immigration statuses or impending removal. Contrarily, this allows the government to use immigration detention for administrative convenience, and also as a means to punish and scare migrants. It causes major psychological distress; prolonged detention takes a serious emotional toll on detainees.

Yarls Wood has made the news on numerous occasions due to accusations of mistreatment and even abuse of women detainees. Women represent around 10 percent of the total population in detention and are concentrated in Yarl’s Wood. As reported by the media and a number of charities, an increasing number of women were detained despite evidence that they were victims of torture, rape and/or human trafficking. Many of these detained women were victims of gender-based violence had sought asylum on those grounds, but Home Office had violated rules by placing them in detention. Diane Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti were also disturbed by detainees’ lack of access to legal advice. Indeed, among detainees held in IRCs, just one in four were able to secure a legal aid solicitor in 2017.

The classification of detention as an administrative rather than a punitive measure has far-reaching consequences. Contrary to criminal law cases, there is no automatic judicial review of detention, which means that the Home Office, whose staff are known to be poorly trained and overworked, rather than judges, have the power to detain people. Therefore, the vast majority of detainees do not receive justice as they are entitled to and remain in uncertainty about their length of detention.

Detention is also extremely expensive. It cost the government £523.5 million between April 2013 and March 2017, with an additional £16.2 million spent on damages awarded to immigrants who were detained unlawfully in the same period. There has been much support for setting a 28-day limit to detention.

Detention has also been used almost as a prison “overflow” space. Among those detained for longer periods of time, many had some kind of criminal record and their detention periods end up being even longer than their prison sentence. This present situation is that of double punishment. In the second half of 2017, 1,671 (12%) entered through prisons, according to Home Office statistics.

In conclusion, human issues surrounding detention, as well as the financial costs have proved to be problematic, and the effectiveness of detention as a policy measure to control and patrol migration remains controversial. While major flaws are apparent, detention is far from a simple, one-root problem. It ties in to the UK’s hostile attitude towards migrants. In order to deal with the huge financial and human costs of detention, there is a need to revisit the state’s whole immigration regime, and the rationale behind it.

Elisabeth Tsouloukidse is an undergraduate student at Oxford University. Nina Khamsy is the head of Agora migration programme. Additional contributor: Jennifer Ngo holds a masters degree from SOAS University.

In the wake of Brexit, while the issue of immigration prevails in national debates, the damage of the Government’s ‘hostile environment’ policies, designed to deter illegal immigrants in the UK, are being put under increased scrutiny. The hunger strike of detainees in Yarls Wood Immigration Removal Centre in late February has captured media and public attention, while detention also came to the forefront of discussions after the Windrush scandal. The UK Immigration detention is one of the main areas of contention in the British asylum system. Why is it broken and how should it change?

While detention seems to be a convenient option for the state to manage migration, it is a costly solution. It also has damaging effects on detainees, as well as on the legitimacy of the UK’s immigration system. Every year, around 30,000 people pass through immigration removal centres (IRCs), also known as detention centres.

Cases of abuse have increasingly occupied the mediatic space with reports of charges over misconducts in places such as Brook House, an IRC near Gatwick Airport. For instance, detainees taking part in February’s hunger strike were protesting about the poor conditions in detention, but also the greater issue of the UK’s much-criticised indefinite detention. The strike started with a group of roughly 40 women, and numbers quickly swelled to over 120 by March. However, results remain to be seen. More recently, a survey has re-emphasised the urgency to tackle the deplorable situation in UK detention centres, where almost 56% of the study’s sample were either suicidal, seriously ill or victims of torture. This suggests that Home Office guidelines on detention have been breached, since such individuals are only supposed to be detained in extreme cases.

Immigration concerns are considered to be a main driving force behind the vote to leave the EU in 2016. They were a contentious and spotlighted issue during the Brexit referendum. In the following months, the government’s post-Brexit programme on migration will be watched closely by both national and international parties. This moment may also constitute an opportunity for deeper understanding and reflection on alternatives to the costly and damaging immigration detention system. As the new Immigration Bill is to be set out next year, detention will feature prominently in the framework of immigration law enforcement and related policy, and is inextricably entwined with the UK’s border and immigration regime and rationale.

As the largest immigration detention estate in Europe, the UK is also the only European country where indefinite detention is declared legal. However, as expressed by Shaw’s report to the Home Office, there is still too little known and little understood on the political, media and public understanding of institutions and processes linked to the immigration detention. In this regard, “public policy is not assisted when there is so little informed interest and debate”, according to Shaw.

To fill these gaps, Agora’s Migration Programme has undertaken an investigation to shed light on different aspects of UK detention policy. This is our series entitled: ‘UK detention policy: time to change a broken system’.

Our series starts with an overview of the UK’s detention policy and an outline of the major points of contention regarding this piece of government policy, which not only include its financial cost, but also the lack of detention time limit and claims of mistreatment. Our second blog article sheds light on the privatisation of immigration detention in the UK, and explores why outsourcing the immigration detention system makes accountability impossible. Our third article looks at the legal challenge of the immigration detention. It is followed by a blog on the media representation of detention centres in the UK. Our following blog article provides an overview of UK’s detention policies in comparison with EU countries. Our final article, for now, resumes the recommendations and sketches lines of future policies.

Jennifer Ngo holds a Masters degree from SOAS University and is a contributor to the Agora Migration programme. Nina Khamsy is the head of the Migration programme at Agora.