As part of a package of reforms to the UK’s asylum system, Shabana Mahmood has laid out the details of a new community sponsorship route for refugees to come to the UK.
The home secretary’s announcement draws on Canada’s experience of resettling over 400,000 refugees since 1979 through community sponsorship. While the planned UK scheme is much smaller in scale, Mahmood says it will “build over time as public confidence is restored in Britain’s immigration system”.
The UK government has identified a need to respond to global crises, but has stated that any routes need to be “sustainable, well managed and in line with the UK capacity to welcome, accommodate and integrate refugees”. It has identified community sponsorship as a way to meet this aim alongside its efforts to reduce irregular migration, including small boat crossings.
Britain has some limited experience with community sponsorship. A small scheme has welcomed 600 people since 2016. Sponsor groups are required to apply for approval and must raise at least £9,000. The Homes for Ukraine scheme welcomed around 234,000 people and required pre-arrival checks for hosts. But it did not stipulate fundraising – and even provided thank you payments to hosts.
The new proposal draws on Canada’s model by allowing sponsors to name which refugees they will sponsor. It also allows a wider range of organisations to become sponsors, potentially including businesses and universities, alongside faith organisations and community groups.
The ability to name a sponsor could help improve integration and support for refugees. But it was notably absent from the first phase of the UK’s community sponsorship scheme, launched in 2015, where the UN refugee agency selected people based on need.
This changed with the Homes for Ukraine scheme, which introduced the concept of named sponsorship in the UK. But this was directly between individuals, rather than involving institutions.
Moving from independent, needs-based assessment to selection based on personal connections could mean that those with stronger networks are privileged ahead of those more in need.
Homes for Ukraine also never presented a route for institutions like employers and universities to act as sponsors. This addition to the new scheme could improve the currently low levels of employment among resettled refugees, bringing them more in line with international peers like Canada.
Who will be supported?
The UK’s previous refugee routes, such as the one that resettled 20,000 Syrian refugees between 2015 and 2020, have used the UN refugee agency’s categories of vulnerability to identify refugees for resettlement based on the following criteria:
- Legal and/or physical protection needs
- Survivors of violence and/or torture
- Medical needs
- Women and girls at risk
- Family reunification
- Children and adolescents at risk
- Lack of foreseeable alternative durable solutions
This approach has led the UK to focus on the most vulnerable as its priority. As a consequence, arriving refugees are more likely to have complex needs and may be further from being able to join the labour market.
This may partially explain the UK’s poor performance in getting resettled refugees into work. It may also reflect an ongoing lack of appropriate employment and language support for refugees.
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The new scheme will retain the UN’s role in determining who is eligible. But it remains to be seen what criteria will be applied, and if vulnerability will continue to be the main priority.
Given the focus on employers and institutional sponsorship, it may be that the new cohort will be closer to the labour market and less focused on supporting those perceived as most in need.
As shown in Canada, one of the attractions of this type of sponsorship is that the networks it provides can help people access employment and become self-sufficient more quickly.
It will be important to analyse if this is the case in the UK – or if the new programme is simply accepting people who are already more likely to find employment, because of their pre-existing skills and experience.
Not an alternative to state support
One argument in favour of a sponsorship model is that community sponsors can replace the role of the state in the resettlement process, and therefore reduce costs to the state.
The UK experience with Homes for Ukraine bears this out. Hosting refugees in people’s homes circumvented some of the ongoing issues with, and costs of, housing other groups – for example, Afghan refugees.
However, research by my team at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy and Society found that, far from replacing state support, the presence and development of state capacity was a vital prerequisite for the success of Homes for Ukraine.
Local authorities provided pre-arrival checks on sponsors, and acted as a backstop if sponsor relationships broke down. Our research found that this role was crucial in building trust in the scheme and safeguarding arrivals.
On the flipside, in the small-scale community sponsorship scheme launched prior to Homes for Ukraine, local authorities had power to veto sponsorship groups. This veto could be an important factor in ensuring ongoing local consent for migration. But it slowed the uptake of the scheme, and caused frustration among sponsor groups.
Either way, local government has provided crucial – but often invisible – infrastructure to support community sponsorship. While undoubtedly a positive development, the creation of community sponsorship routes should not be separated from refugee resettlement, or from broader work to support community cohesion and integration.
Jacqui Broadhead receives funding from the ESRC, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy.