Explained: The hostile environment

In 2012, Theresa May, the Conservative Home Secretary introduced the ‘Hostile Environment’- a policy response aiming to make life as difficult as possible for people without regular immigration status to live in the UK. Today, the ‘Hostile Environment’ refers to the overarching approach and numerous policies which aim to make it as difficult as possible for migrants.

The phrase was first used by Theresa May to, in her own words, “create, here in Britain, a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants.”

Through this policy, millions of people became border guards overnight. Landlords had to start checking their tenants’ right to be in the UK before they could rent their home; employers had to do the same with their workforce, before hiring or renewing someone’s contract; the NHS had to charge for healthcare if their patients couldn’t prove their right to live in the UK; councils across the UK would not offer support to people facing homelessness unless they could prove they had a right to be here.

This ultimately led to the Windrush Scandal where it was exposed that thousands of people from the Windrush generation, and in some cases their descendants, were being denied legal right to live in the UK. They were denied basic rights, such as the right to work, to rent their homes, to have a bank account and to healthcare. Many were detained or deported to countries they didn’t know and where they had no family or friends. Others faced huge financial hardship and lost their homes because of the wrongdoings of the Home Office.

Since 2012, each subsequent Home Secretary has played their part in building the hostile environment further. Today, we have a myriad of laws aimed at making life very difficult for migrants. From making it impossible to access the welfare system, to charging astronomically high visa fees; from banning people seeking safety from working while their case is pending with the Home Office, to applications becoming incredibly, and unnecessarily, convoluted and complicated.

These policies’ overt aim was to make life difficult for those living in the UK without papers, but in reality the hostile environment hit most migrants - and even people who were born and raised in the UK, but didn’t look or sound white British.

All the people who have come to Praxis since 2012 been impacted by the hostile environment, in one way or another.