When migration policy meets everyday care
In November 2025, the UK Home Secretary announced plans for extensive changes to laws around migrants’ rights to settle in the UK. The proposed changes significantly raise eligibility thresholds (time and pay) for permanent residence in the UK. Described by policy experts as “fiendishly complex”, the plans double down on the hostile approach of the UK’s wider immigration system, which most recently, on 2nd March 2026, reduced the protection period for refugees from 5 years to 30 months. The proposals position the right to settle in the UK (‘settlement’) as a privilege to be ‘earned’, deploying a perverse morality that would penalise low-paid key workers, including care workers, and punish the most vulnerable migrants, including refugees.
The proposals have been roundly criticised, by migrants themselves, by civil society, the legal sector and employers. Here, we add our voices to the critiques, reflecting on findings from the Centre for Care’s Borders and Care research study, which point to the likely negative impacts of the so-called ‘earned settlement’ proposals for refugees.
What research with older people and unpaid carers reveals
Our study, undertaken between 2023-25, explored the care needs and experiences of people with histories of international migration who are now living in the UK (Sheffield). Many analyses of the government proposals focus on impacts to paid workers and workforces, including, as we wrote about last year, to the already crisis-wracked care sector. In this analysis we draw attention to the harmful impacts for older refugees who are not/no longer in paid work, and for unpaid family and community carers, who provide crucial support in an increasingly threatening and violent environment for migrants and racially minoritised populations.
Our participants included resettled refugees who came to the UK from East Africa via the Gateway Protection Programme, a UK government/UNHCR refugee resettlement scheme that ran between 2004-2020. All have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), with the right to apply for British citizenship. The government has said that those who already have ILR will not have any changes applied to their status. (We anticipate a lack of trust in this statement, not least because there are still plans to apply proposals to ‘earn’ settlement retrospectively, including to those who do not have ILR but do already have refugee status, who were expecting a 5-year wait.) However, even if not directly affected themselves, the difficulties our study’s participants continue to confront since arriving in the UK years ago, highlight how the changes would be extremely punitive for refugees still on the route to settlement, who will be impacted by the proposed changes.
Threats to rights to care and rights to stay
Eligibility and debt
Under the proposed changes, people will not be eligible for settlement if they have NHS, government, litigation or tax debt. However, our research found that refugees could incur such debt by mistake. Even years after arriving in the UK, people continued to struggle to understand and navigate state systems (immigration, welfare, health and social care, education), due to complexities and errors in these systems, lack of clear information, digital exclusion, and language barriers. Everyday challenges could snowball and lead to major issues; for example, people incurred debt and were fined or taken to court because of not understanding how to respond to official letters sent to them. In a written submission to the joint inquiry of All Party Parliamentary Groups on Migration and Poverty in October 2023, based on focus group findings, the Centre for Care and Sheffield migrant rights community organisation Stand As One stated:
Mistakes in records made by immigration authorities (not by refugees themselves) were a common experience for participants. These took a very long time to resolve with the Home Office and had alarming financial consequences. For example, one woman discovered that the date of birth put by immigration officials on her identity document was incorrect. Months later, this issue is still not resolved. When reported, her Universal Credit was suspended for a 2- month period, causing her to go into debt.
Increase in time to settlement
The changes would increase the default qualifying period for ILR, from 5 years to 10 years. This change would especially negatively affect older refugees, who are already vulnerable due to experiences of war and increased health needs. In our research, we found that the insecurity of not having British citizenship (prohibitively costly, especially for older people) affected individuals’ wellbeing and caused very real fears that, in old age and nearing end-of-life, they might still be sent back to places of extreme violence and persecution. For example, John (name changed), aged in his 70s, told us,
Where we come from, there’s non-stop war. That’s why we fled from there; that’s why we’re here. That’s why we want our passport. So even if we get too old and we can’t do anything, we die, but with our UK passport. And then we’ll have hope not to go back.
Care penalty
Refugees would be penalised, by further significant delays to settlement, for claiming public funds. However, they – mostly women – are often caring for kin, such as grandchildren and ageing parents. Those who do this care are unable to do paid work at the same time and are more likely to need public funds such as Universal Credit. These refugees would be disproportionately penalised by the proposed changes. For example, in our study, we met Neema (name changed), a single parent with a young child, who had to give up paid work to care for her ageing mother. Her mother’s health and care needs increased soon after they arrived in the UK as refugees from war. Her mother cannot speak English to communicate with domiciliary carers, so Neema stepped in, unpaid. She did so willingly but the financial impact has been severe.
Unfair pathways to settlement
The proposed changes are framed around so-called ‘core pillars’ for settlement. These include ‘integration’ into and ‘contribution’ to society. Yet our research shows how the measures to evaluate these standards are deeply problematic, and would produce the very opposite of a ‘fair’ pathway to settlement:
Integration: to accelerate their path to settlement under the proposed, much longer route, refugees would need to demonstrate advanced English capacity (C1 standard). However, in our research, we found that current English language (ESOL) provision is inadequate for many refugees to even achieve a basic or intermediate level of English. This is because ESOL classes assume full literacy abilities, but older people, especially, may not have had, or not have completed, formal education even in their first languages, and in fact need literacy support (which is not offered). This measure would be particularly punitive to older refugees and those who already lost education due to caring in childhood (especially women), war and displacement. Describing her experiences of ESOL classes, Barika (name changed), aged in her 50s, said,
As an old person, you feel shame and you wonder: if only I had gone to school early [in life], these young students would not be laughing at me. You can find in class someone who does not know even how to write their name and you get a teacher who is impatient and talks very fast.
‘Contribution’ to society: one of the ways it is proposed refugees could accelerate their path to settlement (under the new, longer, route) is to do voluntary work in local communities. However, this proposal: a) further penalises those who are already caring for kin at home, and do not have the time or capacity to also volunteer; b) creates an economic penalty through the expectation that refugees, already struggling financially, work for free; c) penalises refugees in poorer health who are less likely to be able to do voluntary work, due to their own care needs. The inequalities that this measure would entrench can be seen in the words of the founder and leader of a community group in Sheffield, who emphasised the group’s crucial work but illustrated how unsustainable it is for refugees to be able to volunteer, unpaid:
Even the interpreters are volunteers. Some, they don’t even have money to eat twice a day.
What next?
The public consultation on these proposals for settlement closed on 12th February. Over 120 migrant rights and community organisations refused to participate in the consultation at all, pointing out the flawed structure of the questionnaire, and arguing that the whole process serves to increase structural racism and class-based exploitation. With the government indicating changes could be confirmed as early as April, it is hard to see how this timeframe allows for genuine or meaningful consideration of the 130,000 responses received. As the recent Gorton and Denton by-election result implies that people want an inclusive and hopeful political agenda rather than one grounded in hostility and division, we hope that the government listens at least to votes on the ground and responds accordingly.
About the authors
In her role at the Centre for Care, Jayanthi is working with Professor Majella Kilkey on the research Borders and Care. The study examines the role of bordering processes in shaping experiences of care among racially minoritised people in the UK who also have experiences of international migration. The focus is on the lived experiences across the life course of older people and those in care relationships with them and the data are being collected via in-depth qualitative methods.
Majella is a qualitative researcher working at the intersection of migration, family and care studies, including a focus on life-course dynamics. She researches with groups traditionally seen as ‘marginalised’ / ‘excluded’ / ‘disadvantaged’, including older people with a migrant background, young migrants and asylum seekers and migrant care workers. Her research is grounded in partnership working, and she is committed to using participatory and arts-based approaches to research lived experience with the aims of engendering inclusion, respect and esteem.
