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The Hostile Office

The Hostile Office is racist by design.

Racist exclusion is the basis of immigration policies . It stems from a long history of targeting ‘unwelcome’ groups of migrants based on colonial constructions of race, deservingness or who can be economically ‘useful’ to Britain. Racialised people from Britain’s former colonies being the most affected by raids, detention, deportation and citizenship deprivation.

Since its 1792 creation, during the height of the colonial era, the Hostile Office has existed to manage, regulate and prevent people from arriving and living in the UK. It has been used to enact laws, most of which have been designed to reduce the population of People of Colour. A 2024 Government report concluded that 30 years of racist immigration legislation since 1948 was created to reduce the country’s non-White population. The 52-page analysis set out how the British Empire depended on racism to function.

The innate racism in UK immigration legislation continues to shape numerous policies including the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, and ‘illegal’ Migration Act 2023. While the racist aims of much of this legislation are not explicitly mentioned in UK law, these immigration policies often rely on racist assumptions and White supremacist ideas. This is either through:

The use of language and concepts that have historically had, and continue to have, racist connotations, or through deliberately vague language, which makes space for arbitrary and racist application
Other policies, including visa schemes, are overtly more accessible to certain groups (likely to be White, wealthier and/or from the West) and more restrictive to others. Again, while they do not feature the explicit language of racism, they clearly utilise a racist understanding of who is welcome, who is ‘like us’, or who is ‘deserving’ of being here
Deprivation powers being used to disproportionately dispossess racialised citizens of their British citizenship

Our groundbreaking Hostile Office report found that:

Over the last century, dehumanising, language in the UK has remained consistent, with migrants being labelled as an “alien invasion”, “swarm” and “locusts”
The UK’s immigration system and visa schemes are grounded in the concept of ‘racial commodification’ and are explicitly designed to ‘manage’ racialised people to extract resources or labour from, or dehumanise them.
Citizenship deprivation is racially targeted. Of those who have had their citizenship revoked since 2002, 85% had nationalities of countries in Africa, South Asia or West Asia (the Middle East) and 83% were from former British colonies
People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi heritage are most affected by citizenship deprivation (41%) and all of them were born British citizens

At the Migrants’ Rights Network, we know that in order to tackle hostile immigration policy, we need to look at the history of colonialism and the concept of who is seen to be welcome in the UK. If we want to create a just and equitable society for all, we have to be honest about the racism, homophobia and other forms of discrimination ingrained in UK immigration policy.

We are no longer content to simply ask for reforms or tweaks that will make this racist, colonial-era infrastructure ‘acceptable’. For People of Colour and other marginalised groups, this system simply wasn’t designed for us. That is why we are calling for the Hostile Office and immigration system to be dismantled. We are committed to holding the Government to account, and call on them to dismantle these cruel structures that have made the lives of migrants, and migratised people, a misery.

Join us in taking a bold, transformative stance with migrant justice at the heart of policy.

Hostile Office report trigger warning: Please note this report analyses historical sources relating to People of Colour and migrants. Therefore, it contains language that may be triggering to some.

Read the report

For a more accessible and printer friendly version of the report, click here.

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If you have lived experience and/or expertise of any of the areas listed in our Hostile Office campaign, and would like to help us campaign for an end to the Hostile Environment once and for all, please get in touch by emailing [email protected]