Original article by Vicky Taylor republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.

Don’t be fooled by Labour’s show of providing safe migration routes. It’s justifying a cruel trade in people

Yesterday afternoon, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new migration deal to respond to Channel crossings.

After three days of discussions between the two leaders, Starmer promised “hard-headed, aggressive action on all fronts” to “smash the gangs” who he says are responsible for people crossing the Channel on dinghies.

The deal? A “one in, one out” system, which will return to France some of the people who cross the Channel irregularly. In exchange, France will send people to the UK who, for example, are seeking to reunite with family members here.

Shortly after he was elected last year, Starmer promised “no more gimmicks or empty promises” regarding Labour’s response to people arriving on ‘small boats’. Then, in a welcomed move, he scrapped the previous government’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Since then, however, Labour has done what they said they wouldn’t – introduce performative gimmicks to convince voters they’re in ‘control’ of migration. They announced plans to invest £75m in a new ‘Border Security Command’, which was quickly criticised as a simple rebranding of what came before. And in a move straight out of Trump’s playbook, they also began televising deportation flights.

This “one in, one out” deal is no different. The plan proposes a cruel trade in people for nothing more than short-term political point scoring, as the government worries about losing votes to Reform.

Starmer and Macron say the scheme will help deter people from making the crossing by reducing their chances of settling in the UK. But there is no evidence to support this. Time and time again, successive British governments have increased their cruelty towards people arriving on ‘small boats’. Yet people have continued to make the journey.

“New deterrents” are not the solution. This new deal will cause considerable further harm, resulting in the forcible transfer of people back to France. Labour are falling into the same trap that contributed to the Conservatives’ last general election defeat.

‘Safe routes’ used to justify hostility

While details are not yet available, the new deal proposes a ‘safe route’ for some people trying to reach the UK from France. It’s been reported that the ‘one in’ element would target those with family in the UK, enabling them to reach the country without having to risk their lives.

If implemented well, this scheme may provide some people with a safer route to reach the UK. As the visa schemes offered to Ukrainians fleeing conflict has shown, where safer routes exist, people will take them.

The problem is, for nearly everybody else waiting to cross the Channel, no other route exists for them to seek safety in the UK. This agreement will not, in any meaningful way, solve this issue. People will continue to cross in dinghies in the absence of other, safer routes. If anything, it may fuel demand for crossing the Channel, as those forcibly returned by the ‘one out’ element could try again to reach the UK.

Piecemeal ‘safe and legal routes’ like this should not replace people’s ability to claim asylum if they arrive on UK soil. Yet this is exactly what is happening. The UK is replacing its legal and moral obligations to people seeking asylum with a discretionary ‘pick-your-own’ approach based on national self-interest. Then, they use these ‘safe routes’ to justify hostility towards asylum seekers who do arrive irregularly.

This agreement will result in the punitive trade in human beings across Europe

We don’t yet know what will happen to people after they’ve been returned to France. It’s possible that those returned would then be transferred onwards across Europe. An EU law called the Dublin Regulation means that France could return them back to the first country in Europe they entered. Five of those states – Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain – have written to the European Commission warning that the deal could increase pressure on them. They argue it sets a dangerous precedent for migration governance across the bloc.

Above all else, this agreement will result in the punitive trade in human beings across Europe.

The deterrence delusion

The proposed ‘one-for-one’ pilot scheme continues a 30-year pattern of UK-France agreements to ‘deter’ irregular crossings by increasingly hostility. Deterrence is the convenient, common-sense logic used to justify increasingly cruel policies. It possesses a dangerous self-reinforcing quality: when harsh policies fail to reduce arrivals, this is always attributed to the insufficient severity of the deterrent. Rather than questioning the logic itself, the much easier conclusion to reach is that even more severe measures are necessary.

Yet, even according to the Home Office’s own analysts, there is no evidence that harsh measures deter people from trying to reach the UK to seek asylum. And while some don’t know about the UK’s ever-changing policies, many are aware and still judge the journey to be worth the risk, because there is no other option available.

The government refuses to acknowledge this, so we find ourselves caught in a cycle with no end in sight.

‘Deterrence’ has been used to justify a series of rights-eroding legislation in recent years. The Nationality and Borders Act changed the meaning of ‘refugee’ in British law, making it a harder definition to qualify for. It also introduced powers which enabled the home secretary to deem the asylum claims of irregular arrivals to the UK inadmissible.

The 2022 law also introduced the new crime of ‘illegal arrival’, which criminalised seeking asylum for the first time in the UK. The move was criticised by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), who said it breached the UK’s obligations under the Refugee Convention: refugees should not be penalised for the way they arrive in a country to seek asylum. In spite of this, at least 500 people have been convicted for ‘illegal arrival’ since June 2022, including refugees, victims of trafficking and torture, and children wrongly assessed to be adults.

‘Deterrence’ does not work. This is not because the policies are not ‘tough enough’, but because people will continue to move when it is not safe for them to stay still

Then in 2023, the Illegal Migration Act rolled back refugee rights even further. It legislated that people whose asylum claims are rejected could never have a future claim assessed in the UK and could not be granted any form of leave. It also created a mandatory duty for the home secretary to remove people deemed inadmissible for asylum – either to their own country, or to a ‘safe third country’. However, post-Brexit, the UK had very few agreements regarding removals. In desperation, the previous government hatched its ill-fated Rwanda plan – which ultimately proved to be a costly, unlawful disaster.

Despite these punitive efforts, people have continued to make the difficult journey across the Channel. Almost 20,000 people crossed in the first half of 2025, a significant increase from the same period in both 2024 and 2023. It’s clear that ‘deterrence’ does not work. This is not because the policies are not tough enough, but because people will continue to move when it is not safe for them to stay still.

Following the money: what happens in France?

While often justified as necessary to prevent the loss of life at sea, evidence strongly suggests that British spending in northern France has in fact increased the risks for people crossing.

Restrictions to the supply of dinghies has forced more people onto fewer crafts, resulting in deadly overcrowding. Footage released by the Guardian and the BBC has shown French police using violent tactics both on land and in the water, including creating waves to flood dinghies, threatening people with pepper spray, and using knives to slash boats in the water. Men, women and children have died in northern France, on land and in the shallows, as a direct result of these tactics.

Alongside the “one in, one out” deal, Macron argued that new tactics were needed on French beaches to respond to people smugglers. It has been rumoured that new powers are being considered which would enable French officers to intervene with dinghies up to 300m from the coastline. However, police unions are resisting, with concerns that this might breach laws regulating the treatment of boats in distress at sea. These are the same concerns which ultimately ended the previous UK government’s plans to ‘push-back’ dinghies at sea.

If passed, this measure will clearly endanger people further. British-funded policing efforts have resulted in record numbers of people drowning in the French shallows – 82 people died last year, including at least 14 children. While the government scapegoats young asylum seekers for these deaths, we must continue to call the UK and France to account for how money is being spent on the beaches.

No more gimmicks?

Starmer’s promise to end the “gimmicks and gestures” has proven hollow. Despite the promise of something new, his plans represent a direct continuation of the Conservative’s cruel approach.

In a dangerous escalation in rhetoric, Labour have argued that Channel crossings must be treated using “counter-terror style powers”. Its new Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill – currently in the parliamentary committee stage – proposes several new immigration offences, modelled on terrorism offences. These include the possession of information or objects that could be used for “immigration crime”.

While purported as necessary to “smash the gangs”, in reality, these offences are likely to be used against asylum seekers themselves, as the government has included no safeguards or protections for refugees.

Performative measures will not bring an end to death and despair in the Channel. These are policies not based on evidence or concerns for human life, but rather on a desire to appear “tough” on migration.

As people have continued to cross the Channel, both Labour and Conservative governments have resorted to increasingly cruel, often violent policies in their attempts to “stop the boats”. As continued cycles of policies have shown, they will not work. Instead, they will bring further harm to people seeking a better life in the UK. We must resist the state-supported trade in human beings and break the cruel cycle of deterrence.

Original article by Vicky Taylor republished from Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence.