Migration Policy and the Politics of Belonging

By: Adrian Khodavardar

When Sajid Javid speaks about fairness in Britain’s immigration system, his personal history is never far from view. As the son of a Pakistani bus driver who arrived in Britain in the 1960s, Javid rose to become the country’s first British Asian Home Secretary. Yet the system he came to defend would almost certainly have prevented his father from ever entering the country in the first place. I argue this is not a rhetorical irony but a material one, shaping who is permitted to belong in Britain today. 

Britain’s migration politics has entered a new phase of convergence; where immigration once divided left and right, it is now formed by a shared language of control, contribution and conditional belonging.

Central to this shift are these politicians with migrant family backgrounds who have become advocates or defenders of tougher migration regimes. Figures such as Javid and Labour’s current Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, are presented as symbols of fairness and credibility, even as they promote policies that would have excluded families like their own.

Serving as the Home Secretary between 2018 and 2019, Javid’s role in consolidating restrictive migration policy can be exemplified through how he defended the Conservative government’s commitment to reducing net migration, maintaining what was widely described as a “hostile environment”. Despite rhetorically distancing himself from the policy’s most visible failures, the underlying system was nonetheless upheld. Policies tying access to housing, healthcare and employment to immigration status remained in place, continuing to outsource border enforcement to landlords, employers and public servants. Javid also became a prominent advocate of the post-Brexit, points-based immigration system, arguing that it would restore fairness by treating all migrants equally. Here, by presenting restriction as a neutral, technocratic exercise rather than an ideological choice, exclusion was recast as common sense. His family story was frequently invoked to reinforce this framing. The implication was clear: if someone whose parents arrived under far looser rules now endorsed tougher ones, those rules must be reasonable and legitimate.

Yet, I believe this obscures a deeper contradiction. Javid’s parents benefited from a migration system shaped by labour demand, post-war reconstruction and assumptions about long-term settlement. It valued work over income thresholds and contribution over formal credentials. Under today’s rules, many routes to settlement and family reunion are conditional on income requirements that exclude large numbers of people in low-paid but socially essential work. Migrants staffing transport networks, care homes and hospitals are increasingly treated as economically insufficient, regardless of their labour or length of residence. Javid’s story therefore functions less as an argument for fairness than as a moral shield against accusations of exclusion. It allows restriction to appear principled and worthwhile rather than punitive, even as its effects fall most heavily on those with the least security. It’s clear that what is presented as neutrality is, in practice, a recalibration of belonging around income, credentials and compliance.

Alternatively, if Javid represents the consolidation of restrictive policy within government, Mahmood signals its normalisation across party lines. As Labour seeks to neutralise immigration as an electoral vulnerability, senior figures have echoed Conservative language around control and contribution. Mahmood’s suggestion that her own parents might not qualify under current proposals was framed as political realism rather than a challenge to the system itself. Mahmood does not design immigration policy directly, but her positioning is symbolically important. Her significance lies in legitimation: in what her presence allows to be said, and by whom. Her background is used to signal that Labour’s shift is not rooted in hostility but responsibility, enabling restrictive positions to be articulated with reduced risk of backlash.

Supporters may argue that this reflects successful integration. From this perspective, politicians with migrant backgrounds speak as national leaders responding to public anxiety, with lived experience granting them credibility to articulate hard truths. Nonetheless, this strategy has consequences. When politicians with migrant backgrounds endorse restrictive policies, they narrow the moral terrain of the debate.

Critics are more easily dismissed as naive, while supporters can claim that lived experience has sanctioned difficult choices. This framing privileges stories of exceptional mobility over the structural realities faced by low-paid workers, asylum seekers and family migrants, whose exclusion is treated as unfortunate but necessary.

Ultimately, this cross-party convergence suggests a bleak outlook for those hoping for a more just immigration system.

With both major parties competing to appear credible in control, there is little incentive to challenge the assumptions that underpin restriction. What is lost is a serious reckoning with what kind of society Britain wants to be.

I believe migration is not only a matter of numbers or skills, but of values and belonging. When personal histories are used to defend exclusion rather than to question it, the debate skews and hardens. The stories of Javid and Mahmood could have reminded us that migration has long been shaped by chance, need and collective benefit. Instead, it is clear how they are mobilised to legitimise a politics of restraint that closes the door behind them, asking those left outside to accept closure as fairness.

Image: Garry Knight