The Securitization of Asylum: A Review of UK Asylum Laws Post-Brexit

Abstract

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Understanding the role of external actors is essential to understanding the United Kingdom’s (UK) securitization agenda in the field of asylum. Whilst the internal dynamics of securitization in migration and asylum and its links to the Brexit referendum have been extensively analysed, the externalization of asylum and its connection to the so-called ‘hostile environment’ policy have received less attention. This article addresses this gap, and focuses on how the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the UK–Rwanda Memorandum of Understanding for the relocation of asylum seekers advance the externalization of asylum post-Brexit. It examines how these reforms reinforce the securitization that characterizes the UK’s asylum and migration policy and evaluates how they exclude asylum seekers from access to basic human rights, in violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.