Immigration Policy and Precarious Migrant Labour in the UK

Griff Ferris, Stefano Piemontese and Nando Sigona

The I-CLAIM project investigates the living and working conditions of migrant households with precarious legal status in Europe. In the UK, migrant irregularity is not simply the result of unauthorised entry or individual rule breaking. Rather, it is actively produced and reproduced through a policy environment that, over the past two decades, has expanded immigration enforcement into the everyday spaces of work, housing, public services, education and policing (Piemontese & Sigona, 2024). UK immigration law and policy have created what I-CLAIM researchers describe as an “irregularity assemblage” (Sigona & van Liempt, 2025): a system in which legal rules, bureaucratic procedures, employers, digital infrastructures and public narratives converge to make migrants’ legal status increasingly precarious. In this system, policies do not simply restrict rights; they can also generate irregularity by design.

Escalating visa costs, rigid sponsorship systems, and data-sharing across institutions all contribute to situations where migrants lose status or struggle to maintain lawful residence. This policy architecture is reinforced by the way migration is framed in political and media debates. Our analysis of the Narrative Construction of Migrant Irregularity in the UK (Piemontese, 2025) shows that migration is increasingly discussed through a binary distinction between legality and illegality, with heavy reliance on imagery of “small boats”, numerical indicators, and moralised distinctions between “deserving” and “undeserving” migrants. These narratives shape public understanding of migration and help legitimise increasingly restrictive policies while narrowing the space for rights-based discussions.

Public perceptions are also shaped by limited and uneven knowledge about migration. Evidence from our survey on Public Understanding and Attitudes to Irregular Migration in the UK (Lessard-Phillips & Sigona, 2025) shows that many people misunderstand how irregular migration actually occurs, often assuming it results primarily from unauthorised border crossings rather than visa overstays, bureaucratic barriers, or employer-linked migration regimes. Against this backdrop, the I-CLAIM project has conducted two in-depth studies of migrant work in the food delivery and domestic work sectors. These sectors illustrate how immigration policies interact with labour market structures to shape everyday working conditions. Research on irregularised migrant workers in the UK food delivery sector (Sigona, Piemontese, Achi, & Soares Mendes, 2025) shows how delivery riders operate at the intersection of algorithmic management and intensified immigration enforcement targeting “illegal working”. Meanwhile, research on irregularised migrants in domestic work (Sigona, Piemontese, Soares Mendes, & Achi, 2025) highlights how restrictive visa routes and sponsorship systems channel migrant workers into isolation, overwork and, in some cases, situations resembling forced labour. These findings reveal a clear pattern: the UK policy environment does not merely fail to prevent exploitation — it can structurally enable it.

By criminalising border crossings, restricting access to work and services, embedding immigration checks into everyday life, and denying safe reporting mechanisms, the current system traps many irregularised migrants in situations where exploitation becomes widespread and accountability difficult. Migrants are often punished for the very precarity that state policies help to produce. This policy brief draws on key findings from I-CLAIM research in the UK, as well as insights from conversations with migrant activists, trade unions, legal practitioners and civil society organisations. It sets out a series of 3 recommendations for improving the living and working conditions of irregularised migrant workers and their families. Migrants have long been central to the UK’s workforce and labour movement. Today they make up around one fifth of the UK labour force (Fernández-Reino & Brindle, 2025). Yet the current migration system undermines their rights, autonomy and ability to build stable lives. The UK urgently needs a migration and labour framework that protects people rather than weaponising legal status, and that enables all workers — regardless of where they were born — to live and work with dignity and security (JCWI, 2024).