Understanding Migrant Motivations For Trying To Reach The UK

Cases of irregular migrants crossing the Channel on small boats are receiving substantial media and political attention. However, these cases form part of a much larger migratory trend which law enforcement alone will not contain, let alone improve. The complexity and scale of irregular migration in Europe calls for an array of measures addressing the many components of the problem.     

In 2019, ARK carried out a series of research projects analysing the behaviour and decision making of irregular migrants along the Mediterranean and trans-Saharan routes. This led us to gather first-hand testimonies from irregular migrants from Nigeria and Iran, all the way to Calais via transit points such as Turkey, Greece and Serbia. The key insights gained from these interviews were the importance of the migrants’ ‘risk appetite’, the reality of the pressure to emigrate from source countries and the lack of understanding of legal migration pathways. 

A recurrent question asked in the UK is “why do irregular migrants choose Britain as their final destination?” In reality, only a minority do. Compared to the 676,300[1] asylum seekers who applied for international protection in EU-27 countries in 2019, only 34,354 did so in the UK.[2] During that year, the UK had an asylum application rate of 515 per million/population compared to an EU-27 average of 1,520. Across the Channel, France’s 2019 average was 1,980. Amongst the people we talked to in the Calais jungle, those who choose to come to the UK do so for two main reasons: because they wished to reunite with relatives or friends based there, and because English is a more widespread language amongst the refugee population.  

A law enforcement-based response to these irregular crossings would put the UK in breach of international treaties it has signed. According to Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, the type of maritime interdiction operations (MIO) or deterrence operations that are currently being suggested would put the UK at odds with several key articles of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) which states what a government can do within their territorial waters, as well as the 1974 Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS Convention), and the 1979 Search and Rescue Convention (SAR Convention).[3]

Even if these legal constraints did not exist, a law enforcement-based response would not address the reason human beings are attempting those perilous crossings in the first place. Take the case of Iran. In 2019, ARK asked Iranian migrants in transit in the Balkans what made them leave their country. Their answers usually involved a combination of factors including the hardening of the Iranian regime against minorities and activists, the two-digit inflation that meant that people’s savings were evaporating and the fact that the north of the country experienced floods that destroyed $1.1 billion worth of crops.[4] Against this backdrop, leaving might be the only rational decision for significant swathes of the population. Another factor to bear in mind is the migrants’ risk appetite. It can take irregular migrants more than two years to reach their destination and that period is usually filled with time spent in camps or trying to earn the money required to complete the journey. Every step of the way, migrants face the risk of abuse (be it financial or physical), incarceration, deportation and death. All this means that by the time irregular migrants reach Calais, it is too late to do anything to deter them from pushing ahead even if doing so carries significant risk. As long as pools of desperate people running out of options form near borders, a portion of them will resort to desperate measures like crossing the Channel on unseaworthy dinghies. 

So what are the options for ‘destination’ countries? A first step would be for these countries to uphold their human rights obligations by giving genuine asylum seekers a fair chance to make their case. Making the process more straightforward and accessible would reduce the number of irregular migrants resorting to desperate methods.   

In the medium term, destination countries should focus on the economic development of source countries to create better livelihood opportunities at home and thus reduce the incentive to leave. In a study of migration communications initiatives conducted in Nigeria last year, ARK found that messaging focusing on credible economic prospects at home resonated the most with aspiring migrants in line with similar results we observed during a pilot initiative in Pakistan in 2018, connecting aspiring migrants to job opportunities at home.

In the long run, the UK and its European neighbours will need to face difficult questions related to their own demography and that of ‘source’ countries. The European continent is ageing and will have lost 50 million people of working age by 2050. By then, Africa will have spawned an additional 1.3 billion people, 130 million in North Africa alone.[5] No country can realistically resist this type of demographic pressure. However, its impact can be mitigated by identifying future areas of workforce scarcity and cooperating with source countries to align their education sectors with the requirements of the future.

About the author: Gwenn Lainé runs ARK's migration portfolio of projects. He served as a naval officer in the French Navy where he took part in several counter piracy and maritime security operations in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Guinea. 

[1] Europa.eu. (2020). Asylum and first-time asylum applicants by citizenship, age and sex Monthly data. [online] Available at: https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?query=BOOKMARK_DS-055296_QID_-58EF474A_UID_-3F171EB0&layout=TIME [Accessed 11 Aug. 2020].

[2] Home Office. “How Many People Do We Grant Asylum or Protection To?” GOV.UK, 28 Nov. 2019, www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-september-2019/how-many-people-do-we-grant-asylum-or-protection-to. ‌

[3] Moreno-Lax, V. (2017). The Interdiction of Asylum Seekers at Sea: Law and (mal)practice in Europe and Australia. [online] Available at: https://www.unhcr.org/5a0574597.pdf [Accessed 11 Aug. 2020]. ‌

[4] Daragahi, B. (2019). Iran’s Hurricane Katrina moment. [online] Atlantic Council. Available at: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/iran-s-hurricane-katrina-moment/ [Accessed 11 Aug. 2020].

[5] Boussemart, J.-M. and Godet, M. (2018). Europe 2050: Demographic Suicide. [online] www.robert-schuman.eu. Available at: https://www.robert-schuman.eu/en/european-issues/0462-europe-2050-demographic-suicide.