Temporary protection: the UK’s new policies on asylum and returns

In November 2025, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced major changes to the UK’s asylum system. Inspired by Denmark, the reforms aim to deter people from claiming asylum in the UK and make it easier to return unauthorised migrants. This commentary discusses what we know about the reforms, how they compare to other European countries, and whether they will be successful in reducing the number of asylum applications and small boat arrivals.

What are the changes?

The changes set out in the government’s policy paper fall into three categories: reforms to make the asylum system more restrictive, measures aiming to increase returns, and the creation of new safe and legal routes.

First, the government’s plans will make it harder for people who have been recognised as refugees to obtain permanent status in the UK. Refugees granted protection in the UK are currently allowed to remain in the country for 5 years, after which they can apply for settlement. In the future:

• Refugees will be placed on a new ‘Core Protection’ route and have to renew their status every 2.5 years.
• The government will aim to curtail refugees’ status and return them to their countries of origin if conditions there have changed and no longer warrant protection, although it remains unclear how often this will happen in practice.
• People on Core Protection will face a baseline wait of 20 years before becoming eligible for settlement. Many may face shorter or longer waits – up to 30 years if they arrived in the UK illegally, or less than 20 years if they meet requirements on income, language, or volunteering.
• Refugees on Core Protection will not be able to access family reunion unless they meet new requirements, the details of which remain unclear at the time of writing. Unconditional refugee family reunion was suspended in September 2025 and is now subject to the same income threshold as British nationals and other migrants.
• Refugees who obtain a job or begin a course of study will be eligible to switch onto a different ‘Protection Work and Study’ route. This will offer shorter qualifying periods for settlement and more rights, though further details are yet to be announced.
• The government will also give itself more discretion to deny asylum support – free accommodation and subsistence payments – to some asylum seekers, such as those who have the right to work or have not complied with immigration rules or UK law.

Second, the government wants to introduce measures aimed at making it easier to remove people from the UK, including but not limited to refused asylum seekers. It will aim to accelerate asylum appeals, setting up a new body with professional adjudicators instead of judges, and introducing streamlined procedures to deal with all possible claims at once. The government says it will seek to prioritise removals, including by limiting human rights and modern slavery claims. In addition, countries that fail to cooperate on returns may be subject to visa penalties.

Third, new safe and legal routes will be created to allow refugees to be resettled to the UK. Details on these new routes remain scarce, though they will be subject to an annual cap and rely on sponsorship from local communities and individuals, similar to the Homes for Ukraine scheme or the smaller existing community sponsorship programmes. Capped routes will also be introduced for refugees who are students or have particular skills.

How will the UK compare to Denmark and other European countries?

The reforms were said to have taken inspiration from Denmark, which introduced similar restrictions on asylum seekers and refugees after 2015. Denmark allows refugees to remain in the country for 1 to 2 years before having to extend their status. The government also says it wants to curtail status and return people to their country of origin once conditions improve. However, it is unclear how many refugees have been ordered to leave Denmark in recent years as a result. One report indicated that several hundred Syrian refugees had their status revoked after a little over 1,000 of a total of 30,000 cases were reassessed.

Refugees and other migrants in Denmark become eligible for settlement after 8 years, subject to conditions such as having been employed for 3.5 of the last 4 years, and not having accessed public benefits in the previous 4 years. Settlement becomes possible after 4 years if people meet more stringent language, employment, income, and civics conditions. Refugees also have to meet conditions to access family reunion. These include age, income, language, and housing requirements, not having accessed public benefits in the previous 3 years, and posting a financial collateral of up to 7,000 Euros.

Although direct comparisons are difficult, the new system proposed for the UK will, in some ways, be more restrictive than that of Denmark and other European countries – particularly with regard to the time refugees have to wait before becoming eligible for settlement. The system in most other European countries resembles the UK’s current arrangements, with refugees being granted protection for around 5 years, and then becoming eligible for settlement with few additional conditions.

What will be the impact of the reforms?

The proposed policies could, in theory, have a wide range of impacts on the UK and on asylum seekers themselves.

Impact on asylum seekers’ decisions

The government wants the new restrictions to act as a deterrent, leading to a drop in asylum applications or the number of people crossing the English Channel in small boats. However, it is impossible to predict if or to what extent they will achieve that.

In Denmark, asylum applications fell substantially after new restrictions were introduced. Around 2,300 people applied for asylum in 2024 – less than half of one per cent of asylum claims made in the EU, and down from 1.7% in 2015. However, much of this decline took place before 2019, when some key measures were implemented. Policy changes are likely to have played a role, though it is impossible to disentangle their effect from that of other factors, such as fewer unauthorised arrivals in the EU. It is also unclear whether similar policies should be expected to have the same effects in relatively different contexts. Several key factors attract asylum seekers to the UK, irrespective of government policy, such as the English language or the presence of friends and family in the country. In addition, reaching the UK – which lacks access to shared asylum databases after Brexit – may be a final chance at gaining protection for people who have already been refused asylum in the EU.

Figure 1

There is some evidence that the design of the asylum system can have at least some impact on the number of people arriving to claim asylum. However, factors like economic conditions and the presence of diaspora networks have often played a bigger role in determining where asylum seekers go.

• Evidence suggests restrictions to refugee family reunion may lead to a decline in asylum applications, at least among the minority of people who intend to bring family members. Several recent studies show a significant effect of family reunion policies on the distribution of asylum applications across Europe. However, it is unclear to what extent new restrictions – details of which remain unannounced – may reduce the number of asylum claims in the UK.
• There is mixed evidence on the potential effects of making it harder for refugees to obtain permanent rather than temporary status. The probability of obtaining status influences destination choices among asylum seekers, but few studies explicitly compare temporary and permanent alternatives. In one case – Sweden in the early 2010s – reforms leading to automatic permanent residence for some refugees appear to have led to an increase in asylum seekers, indicating that policy changes can directly affect numbers. Yet other work found no connection between permanent residence rules and the number of asylum applications received by European countries. When it comes to migration decisions in general, access to permanent residence seems to matter, but not the amount of time it takes to obtain it.
• There is no clear evidence that denying or reducing support to some asylum seekers while their application is pending would deter people from coming to the UK. Research indicates that welfare generosity can influence where migrants move, particularly among groups more likely to access support, such as refugees. Yet such effects are not found in all contexts, and findings are limited to access to welfare among recognised refugees rather than asylum seekers with ongoing claims.
• Even if the government’s policies to increase returns are successful, it is unclear whether this may deter asylum seekers from coming to the UK. Evidence on the link between returns and asylum applications is limited, though two recent studies failed to find a connection between the risk of being removed and the number of asylum applications.
• One factor that may limit the effects of new policies is a lack of information. Studies show that asylum seekers often have limited knowledge of policy developments in destination countries, particularly when it comes to more technical aspects related to entitlements and requirements.

Overall, therefore, there is some evidence that certain measures the government has proposed do affect asylum seekers’ decisions, but insufficient evidence to be confident that the impact in the UK case will be particularly large. This will only become clear after implementation.

Impact on returns

It is difficult to say to what extent the government’s plans will increase returns. The proposal to review refugees’ status every 2.5 years may lead to more people leaving the country, although, as noted above, reviews of status in Denmark appear to have led to returns in a small percentage of cases. In theory, the measures to accelerate procedures, prioritise removals, and reduce the scope for additional claims might lead to more people being returned. However, such barriers to returns have endured despite previous governments’ efforts to streamline the system. It also remains unclear how some of the proposed legal and operational changes will be implemented. Using visas as leverage to increase cooperation from other countries may make them more likely to sign a return agreement, though there is no evidence on whether this can increase removals.

Because of all these uncertainties, it is also difficult to predict how many migrants who might under the current system have successful legal challenges and gain immigration status in the UK would no longer do so under the proposed system, and what their characteristics are.

Impact on integration

The proposed measures may also affect integration among people who are recognised as refugees and remain in the UK.  In theory, strict rules for permanent settlement and longer periods of time on temporary status may create disincentives to invest in local skills due to uncertainty or conditions perceived as unattainable. Employers may also be more reluctant to hire workers who lack a long-term status or citizenship. On the other hand, additional conditions for settlement could also create incentives for some refugees to meet requirements, such as by working.

The evidence on the impacts of refugees gaining permanent status is mixed and incomplete, although several studies suggest that gaining citizenship does have a positive impact on integration.

Studies on permanent residency policies for refugees in other countries (usually focusing on Sweden and Denmark) have come to mixed results. One study found that imposing more stringent employment and language criteria for permanent settlement led to a decrease in employment in Denmark. However, a different study found that a reform making permanent residence more accessible in Sweden led to more unemployment and lower incomes among those affected. Other work found no connection between labour market integration and the type of status refugees held.

There is some limited evidence that easier access to permanent residence can lead refugees to invest more in studying or acquiring language skills, though this is also disputed. Another study found that temporary status negatively impacted levels of stress and well-being.

Studies looking at the impacts of becoming a citizen are more numerous and have more consistently found positive effects. Permanent status is an initial requirement for citizenship, and a shorter path to citizenship is associated with higher take-up. Studies from the United States, the Netherlands,  France,  and Germany found that naturalisation improved wages or earnings, for example. An EU comparative study found that holding citizenship improved employment rates and occupational status for male migrants from developing countries, while another found positive effects for refugees specifically. A Swiss study found that having citizenship (and acquiring it faster) improved social integration, judged by various factors such as local club membership and reading local newspapers. That said, not every study comes to the same conclusion, with a handful finding no effect or effects only for some groups of migrants or certain measures of integration. Nonetheless, a 2023 review of the literature found that, on balance, citizenship appeared to have ‘sizeable returns’ in the labour market. These findings indicate that there may be a trade-off between the desire to improve integration and the desire to deter asylum seekers from arriving by extending the path to permanent status and citizenship, although it is difficult to be confident about the size of the effects on either side of the ledger.

Thanks to Alan Manning and Maarten Vink for comments on an earlier draft.