Introduction
As part of a broader political project to reduce net migration and prevent, in parliamentary language, the ‘widespread abuse’ of the immigration system, the UK Home Office is set to impose what it describes as an ‘emergency brake’ on student visas to nationals from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Myanmar and Sudan. The visa brake is scheduled to be effective on 26 March 2026, following claims that asylum applications are increasingly being made through the student visa route.
This paper argues that the proposed emergency brake is neither a novel nor an exceptional intervention. Rather, it echoes the contested histories through which Britain’s modern migration system has been designed by assiduously categorising people based on race/ethnicity, class, nationality, descent and more implicitly gender since the post-war period. Political historians and theorists have observed that there has been recurring unease and anxiety across Whitehall, Labour and Conservative governments about non-white immigration since the late 1940s.
The paper concurs with the Migration Advisory Committee’s (MAC 2024) findings that while switching visa may be deemed ‘undesirable’ and ‘unintended usage’ of the route, arriving in the UK legally on a work or study visa and subsequently making a legitimate, admissible asylum application does not constitute abuse.
The paper begins by examining the latest policy debate surrounding the proposed visa restrictions, analysing the divided responses it has provoked across media, civil society, and government. It situates the policy within the longer history of Britain’s migration governance since the post-war period, demonstrating how this intervention reproduces a recurring pattern of short-term, blanket migration fixes that have consistently failed to address structural causes.
Finally, the paper outlines concrete policy directions, urging policymakers to approach immigration through frameworks of fairness and dignity, grounded in international legal obligations, depoliticising student migration and decoupling higher education from border management practices.
The Current Policy Debate
This latest policy has provoked sharply divided responses across tabloid press, parliamentary debates and policy discourse.
Critics have raised fundamental questions about the fairness of the policy. The 1951 Refugee Convention, underpinned by Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, protects asylum seekers from being penalised for irregular or spontaneous entry. The proposed emergency brake does not abide by the spirit of the 1951 Convention and, by restricting legal pathways for nationals from conflict-affected countries, risks undermining the UK’s obligations to provide meaningful access to asylum procedures under international law.
There are also growing concerns that these measures could shift toward hardline immigration policies including a proposed end to permanent refugee status and withdrawal of state support from asylum seekers. Campaigners have warned that restricting legal pathways, including study routes may inadvertently ‘push people to the small boats.’
Higher Education leaders have warned that restricting pathways to academic mobility, including scholarship programmes such as Chevening scholarships, risks compounding the precarity of vulnerable academic communities from conflict-affected regions, while weakening Britain’s international academic networks.
Proponents, however, point to rising asylum figures, invoking ministerial rhetoric of exploitation of legal pathways and ‘abuse’ of the student visa route. Yet the policy’s internal logic is contradictory. The four targeted countries are not high-volume sources of migration. According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency’s data, a total of 3,875 students from these countries were studying at UK universities in 2024-25. Of these 2,665 came from Myanmar, 575 from Cameroon, 355 from Afghanistan and 280 from Sudan.
These figures raise an important question. If migration from these countries represents only a small proportion of international student mobility, why has a blanket visa restriction been framed as a logical policy response? To address this question, it is necessary to situate the emergency brake within the longer history of Britain’s migration governance.
Historical Parallels: A Recurring Pattern
British migration policy has long relied on categorising migrants according to perceived notions of legitimacy. While the specific groups targeted have changed over time, the underlying administrative logic has remained strikingly similar. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s so-called progressive case for reforming Britain’s broken asylum system in 2026 is the latest reiteration of historically pervasive unease and anxiety around migration from the Global South.
This can be traced back to the late 1940s, when Britain initially encouraged migration from the Commonwealth to address labour shortages during post-war reconstruction. By the early 1960s, however, political anxieties surrounding migration from the Commonwealth, especially from the Caribbean and South Asia, began to reshape immigration policy. This led to the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 under the Macmillan government which restricted the migration of ‘coloured immigrants’.
Subsequent legislation further tightened these restrictions. The Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968 and the Immigration Act of 1971 progressively restricted the migration from the Commonwealth. Shortly after the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968, Enoch Powell delivered his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech citing the dangers of immigration from former colonies of West Indies, India, Pakistan and Africa. This political speech would have lasting effects on British politics, polarising public opinion and heightening anti-immigrant sentiment.
Later, the Thatcher government’s British Nationality Act of 1981 tightened definitions of Britishness around racially differentiated citizenship. During the 1990s and early 2000s, political debate increasingly focused on asylum seekers. Governments across the political spectrum introduced reforms aimed at reducing what were described as ‘bogus’ asylum claims.
New Labour’s modernising policies through the Fairer, Faster and Firmer whitepaper on immigration control of 1998, targeted so-called ‘abusive asylum claimants and racketeers’. Theresa May’s hostile environment policy of 2012 further introduced extensive administrative controls designed to deter irregular migration. This policy approach was widely criticised as fundamentally flawed, later culminating in the 2018 Windrush scandal.
Although these policies emerged in different political contexts, they shared a common administrative logic. Governments repeatedly targeted migration routes that were politically visible and easier to regulate. Academic scholarship has shown how political rhetoric and policy-making on immigration have become increasingly harsh over time, often reinforced through arbitrary decision-making and criminalisation of mobility. While the groups themselves changed, the underlying political strategy remained remarkably consistent.
The Political Logic of Migration Control
Underpinning this legislative history is a deeper political dynamic. Political leaders and parliamentary backbenchers, often operating beyond public gaze, have historically played a significant role in shaping immigration discourse and in influencing the public mood. This relationship between political elites and public opinion in not, however, one-directional.
Some historical evidence suggests that British public opinion on immigration has remained largely autonomous and not easily persuaded by political leaders. Polling data consistently indicates that British public attitudes have tended to be broadly restrictionist towards immigration, attitudes that politicians have historically capitalised on rather than fundamentally create. Yet, political elites can also actively manipulate policy and public opinion in pursuit of particular political outcome producing a disjunction between public opinion and policy design.
Disaggregated analyses further complicate this picture by showing that the electoral and political grievances of local constituencies can be catapulted into national political agendas. Public support for tighter immigration control increases in local constituencies with higher levels of immigration, where competition over state resources, housing and employment becomes politically salient.
These patterns reveal a close relationship between public opinion and immigration policy. Voters have historically expressed suspicion towards asylum seekers and low-skilled workers, often constructed as a problem group, costly and a source of social issues. However, the government is not able to directly pursue these groups due to legal constraints and humanitarian obligations. As a result, policymakers often push reform onto less ‘problematic’ migration flows in order to demonstrate effectiveness, even if those groups may not be foremost in the public’s mind.
International students, especially from the Global South occupy this ambiguous position within the migration system. They are an easy target to bring net migration numbers as they are mostly compliant, highly visible within migration statistics and can be regulated through administrative changes to visa rules without the legal complexities associated with refugee protection.
However, this dynamic has also undergone a shift in political rhetoric. In earlier administrative debates, the language of suspicion was primarily directed at asylum seekers, who were frequently portrayed as ‘bogus’ and illegitimate. From the 2000s, however, as international student numbers increased, similar narratives have been applied to international students, who were depicted as enrolling in bogus colleges, pursuing bogus degrees. This extended scrutiny to a group considered economically beneficial created a glaring mismatch between restrictionist political rhetoric and the widely recognised contributions of this group to the higher education sector.
The emergency brake reproduces this administrative logic, organised around desirability and legitimacy, that has structured British immigration control from the outset. Negative media framing alongside party electoral strategy has actively amplified and intensified anti-immigration sentiment over time, creating a feedback loop between public opinion and government policy.
Across this history, several patterns recur: the organisation of immigration governance around categories of race/ethnicity, descent and social class; the use of administrative and statistical controls disproportionately affecting migration from the Global South; the endless modernising promise of a definitive migration fix; and the resort to blanket categorisation over individual assessment. The emergency brake reproduces all four of these dynamics.
Policy Directions: Addressing contradictions
As the historical record demonstrates, blanket migration fixes have consistently failed to provide sustained political and legal solutions. The emergency brake reflects the Government’s broader externalisation strategies, which are often inconsistent with the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention and the ECHR. Closing lawful routes such as the student visa as a viable channel exposes nationals from conflict-affected countries to the risk of human rights violations while systematically denying them access to international protection.
Breaking this cycle requires a different approach.
I. Moving beyond categories in policy-making: Policymakers must move beyond the rigid categorical distinction between refugees and economic migrants. The binary legitimate/illegitimate distinction fails to capture the complex socio-political and economic drivers of migration. A substantial body of historical, political and legal scholarship has shown the disjuncture between conceptual categories and the lived experiences of those on the move.
The process of categorisation itself should be questioned. Who does this conceptual mechanism serve, how do they distinguish and discriminate and how are these categories historically constituted? While legal and policy categories appear to be neutral and objective, they are contingent on political changes and legislative push. The visa restrictions illustrate this shift: Afghan nationals once regarded as having a near prima facie claim to protectionunder international refugee law are now increasingly excluded from humanitarian protection, whether through asylum channels or through legitimate visa switching.
If the categories of legal/illegal and what constitutes ‘abuse’ are socio-politically constructed, then policy responses must address the ambiguities in categorisation. This analysis points towards expanding rather than closing legal routes for protection. Migration analysis indicates that people claim asylum through student visas because other pathways may be inaccessible. The logical policy response is not to close the student route but to restore accessible, dignified, and functional asylum processing as deterrence-based systems have proved ineffective in stopping individuals from fleeing conflict.
II. Moving beyond the political rhetoric of migration crises as justificatory emergency measures: Categories solidify through the rhetoric of crisis. Migration crises afford opportunities for emergency measures, generate media visibility, produce particular subjectivities, and position the British public as spectators.
Migration crises are made legible through impassioned political speeches that accompany policy imperatives. Mahmood’s statement that ‘Britain will always provide refuge to people fleeing war and persecution, but taxpayers cannot be expected to fund the lives of those who exploit the system or break our laws’ claims to reproduce a resentful subjectivity of the aggrieved public.
The same logic structured Suella Braverman’s 2023 speech, ‘The British people are famously a fair and patient people. But their sense of fair play has been tested beyond its limits as they have seen the country taken for a ride. Their patience has run out. The law-abiding patriotic majority have said, “Enough is enough”’.
Through this political rhetoric, the state positions itself as a necessary enforcer of fairness, acting on behalf of the patient public whose tolerance has been finally exhausted. Therefore, increasingly punitive immigration policy frameworks are suggested to manage the migration crisis brought forward by bogus asylum claimants and overseas students using education as a backdoor to the UK labour market.
Thus, emergency politics become routinised as they attend to the aggrieved public through emergency action as a display of sovereign resolve. Immigration policy designed within this framework tends to mistake management of crisis optics based on the production of emergency and scrutinising responses for substantive governance of migration.
Therefore, immigration policy design must move beyond the narrowly conceived notion of crises and binary categories of migrants. Doing so requires challenging historically constituted hierarchies of deservingness and legitimacy premised on selective humanitarianism.
III. Decoupling higher education from border enforcement: Research in higher education has widely discussed how ideas of deservingness are constructed along racial/colonial lines within universities. Studies have shown that mobility and access to education is unevenly structured across the refugee population with UK policies facilitating access for some groups while sanctioning others, especially from Muslim-majority countries such as Afghanistan and Syria.
Although universities operate within the wider state apparatus, they have a degree of institutional autonomy to exercise discretion within existing legal and policy frameworks. Higher education institutions therefore play a crucial role in fostering inclusion and social mobility by offering access to education and opportunities within the labour market. Scholarship programmes can serve as important mechanisms for expanding access to marginalised students and mitigating some of the exclusionary effects of migration policies.
At the same time, scholarship programmes are not neutral criteria of merit but shaped by proficiency in language, academic norms and forms of knowledge valued by Western universities. Therefore, universities will need to use discretion to ensure that scholarships schemes actively challenge rather than inadvertently reproduce existing inequalities. However, this discretion is restricted as universities are increasingly required to undertake immigration monitoring and enforcement on behalf of the Home Office.
The recent termination of scholarship programmes such as the Chevening Scholarships and subsequently the Home Office’s rejection of an appeal to support students through the Chevening route increasingly implicates universities in immigration enforcement.
A coherent policy direction would involve decoupling higher education mobility routes from immigration governance. Scholarship and academic mobility programmes should be ring-fenced from emergency immigration restrictions. For universities to continue playing a meaningful role in supporting displaced and at-risk students, policy frameworks must ensure that higher education institutions are not reduced to sites of border regimes.
Conclusion
A historically informed approach to migration governance would therefore prioritise strengthening asylum systems, expanding lawful pathways and maintaining the institutional independence of higher education from immigration control. Policymakers would need to move beyond cycles of symbolic migration fixes responsive to the political pressures of the time, which are subject to change. Recognising the inherent contradictions that underpin immigration policies would enable policymakers adopt frameworks that balance political and economic interests with obligations to human rights.
It is worth recalling that although the Home Office operationalises immigration, emergency immigration measures throughout history have ultimately implicated and deputised responsibilities through spaces and agents across everyday societies. This involves ordinary British citizens, universities and employers, charities and hospitals, all responsible for checking immigration status, reporting to the Home Office and administering immigration-relation exclusions.
Scholars have repeatedly warned that punitive immigration measures, an ‘emergency brake’ or a ‘hostile environment’, rooted in racial and colonial hierarchies ultimately create profound harm to individuals and to society. The lessons from recent and distant past are clear: if the structural conditions that produced Windrush remain intact, its repetition remains a foreseeable consequence.
