United Kingdom - Definitions and legislative frameworks of the United Kingdom’s migration policy

The UK’s distinctive ‘flexible interpretation’ of legal concepts and instruments also accounts for the lack of a clear-cut distinction between the rationales underlying legislation concerning migration and asylum. This is in line with the traditional pragmatic attitude of the British government, which has regularly conflated the two policies within an overarching strategy aimed at enhancing its control over the inflow of foreigners into the country. Accordingly, the Immigration Act 2014 and its 2016 updates were explicitly designed to create a ‘hostile environment’ for migration. This tale of distinctiveness, however, is tempered by the ‘normalisation pressure’ that the country has been subjected to as a member of the European Union (EU) and the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR), especially in the area of asylum law. Regardless of the results in terms of policy orientations and actual practices, a number of significant elements of a continental-style human-rights protection have been progressively influencing the conceptual context, the content of law and the role of the judiciary in the UK asylum (and migration) policy area.