Introduction

While the United Kingdom had long been a country as closed to new immigrants as any other European nation, a policy shift observable by the end of 1990s began to produce a liberal and open migration regime. Within ten years, the focus of immigration politics moved from restricting entry to Commonwealth immigrants to concentrating on reducing asylum migration and, most recently, to managing labour migration flows under conditions of globalisation. On the one hand, there are numerous legal migration channels in the UK as well as irregular and otherwise de facto immigrants such as asylum seekers, their families and Eastern European labour migrants who have been regularised to a certain extent. Indeed, in 2004 the country's borders were opened to unrestricted flows from the ten new EU member states. On the other hand, 9/11 and, even more so, the London terrorist attacks of July 2005 have reinforced British security concerns and efforts have been made to enhance the control aspect of migration policies. Notably, migration from the 2007 accession countries of Romania and Bulgaria has been subjected to a restrictive transition period. Also in 2007, the UK's institutional framework was reformed and, in the course of reorganising the Home Office, the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) was replaced by the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA). By 2008, the complex legal categories for immigration would come to be replaced by a points system. So far, the migration regulation system has been characterised by constant changes and further major reforms lie ahead. No doubt this makes the evolution of British migration policy difficult to follow.

Transformations in migration policies

When the New Labour government came to power in May 1997, it identified itself as a radical reforming administration that aimed at national renewal and the transformation of government institutions. In a prototypical passage, erstwhile Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote: ‘Reform is a vital part of rediscovering a true national purpose, part of a bigger picture in which our country is a model of the 21st century developed nation’ (Blair 1998: iii).

At the heart of contemporary British politics is the desire to improve national economic performance, labour productivity and labour market participation, yet all the while reducing benefits dependency. New Labour was anxious to rebut the Old Labour image of being hostile to financial and commercial interests.