Since the Modern Slavery Act’s passage in 2015, successive governments have weakened its protections for survivors by changing the act’s guidelines and restricting its support.
This trend continued with the Illegal Migration Act, passed this year. Survivors of trafficking arriving irregularly to the UK are now prevented from accessing support due to their immigration status. The Nationality and Borders Act also came into force this year. This latter piece of legislation subjects victims to higher evidence thresholds much earlier in their recovery period, subjects them to criminal background checks, and restricts support for survivors of trafficking in cases where victims don’t disclose abuse ‘quickly’ enough.
We asked five people with lived experience of severe exploitation, all of whom would have faced deportation under this new legislation, what steps the UK could now take to undo the damage and begin building a system that allows survivors to recover emotionally, financially, and physically after modern slavery.
A firewall between police and immigration enforcement
Victims of crime in the UK are not guaranteed protection from immigration enforcement. These include modern slavery survivors with insecure status, who are liable to deportation.
“While I was being exploited, I told people at my church, but they didn’t encourage me to tell the police,” Anna, a survivor of modern slavery, said. “They knew I could be deported.”
A lack of trust in authorities and the support they offer frequently prevents survivors of modern slavery from coming forward. Too often, that fear is well-founded. Research by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants found that details of 796 trafficking victims were passed to immigration enforcement in a two-year period.
Anna eventually opened up to the police, but only after she was questioned over an unrelated incident where four strangers racially assaulted her at a London train station. With an invalid visa, she spent that night in a police cell, alone, after disclosing her experiences of modern slavery.
“Victims of any crime should not be treated as ‘immigration issues,’” Anna said. “It makes the police blind to victims, because they are not looking out for the signs of vulnerability. They are searching for ‘migrants.’”
It should be made crystal clear about what you are entitled to, such as legal aid.
The idea of protecting victims from deportation has many proponents. Last year, the government’s own director of labour market enforcement argued that migrant workers must be able to safely report abuse. Yet, progress in this area remains slow.
Kelly, a medical student, was detained twice due to her immigration status, despite disclosing evidence of modern slavery “again and again”. She argues it’s impossible for victims to trust authorities if they risk punishment for speaking out about their abuse.
Recognise the reality of trauma
Kelly said that not only must police powers be reformed, but survivors must stop being so heavily scrutinised by Home Office systems designed to find faults and inconsistencies in order to discredit them. Trust goes both ways: if authorities expect victims to trust them, they must also show signs of trusting the victims.
“Under the current system, [Home Office] decision makers expect you to trust them instantly, even if you come from a culture where authorities can’t be trusted,” she explained. “If you don’t talk, you’re penalised for it.”
Under the Nationality and Borders Act, the government is granted new powers to issue non-UK victims with ‘trafficking information notices’, giving survivors a set number of days to disclose all details relevant to their case, regardless of whether they have had access to legal advice, counselling, or basic subsistence. The measure, dubbed the ‘trauma deadline’ by the charity sector, must be revisited in order to prevent survivors from being punished for the ways that their bodies and minds are processing their experiences.
People who have suffered the worst forms of abuse need time to open up, and it is very rare that they tell their complete story all at once. The well-documented impact of trauma on memory, coupled with the time needed to overcome shame and stigma through trust in front-line professionals, mean that evidence is often shared piecemeal. A trauma-informed system recognises this instead of punishing it. The style and location of the interviews can also work against survivors. In Kelly’s case, the process of giving evidence in a prison-like setting retraumatised her.
What the government must do, she said, is enshrine survivors’ protection from deportation into law and make the decision-making process more trauma-informed. She stressed that survivors need “time”.
A roadmap of processes, rights and options
Something even simpler to achieve is the development of a road map for survivors starting their recovery journey, said Sanu, a survivor and campaigner on human trafficking. At the moment, survivors are not provided with standardised wording on their rights, and first responders’ descriptions of support can vary dramatically from person to person. Easy-to-understand, multilingual resources designed to help each survivor make informed decisions simply don’t exist. This leaves survivors without clear information about their rights and the path ahead at a time when they are at their most vulnerable.
“In my case, I didn’t know anything about trafficking before talking to the police. I had a huge gap in my legal understanding,” said Sanu, who was questioned by police without a lawyer present. “It should be made crystal clear about what you are entitled to, such as legal aid.”
The right to work while recovering from exploitation is crucial for a person’s confidence and survival.
In 2017, the government promised to roll out a scheme called ‘Places of Safety’, which would provide victims with temporary safe housing, counselling and advocacy to better navigate the system when first reporting their abuse. It never materialised. Sanu explained that legal and social support at this early stage would help survivors make more informed choices about the way they engage with the criminal justice system.
“In my case, I gave a statement to help the investigation straight away. But it was not the right decision,” said Sanu. “I was in slavery for six years, and I was so broken. I hardly talked.”
Under the Illegal Migration Act, all survivors with insecure immigration status at the time of arriving in the UK are at risk of deportation and detention, except for some cases where victims are supporting a police investigation. However, a late-stage amendment to the act saw the government raise the threshold for victims, so that even those complying with an investigation are presumed to be able to engage with police remotely after deportation.
Stability through opportunity
People going through the National Referral Mechanism – the official system for identifying victims of trafficking and modern slavery – often face restrictions on work. They are outright banned from working in the UK if they are also seeking asylum.
Instead, most are expected to survive on a governmental stipend of £47.39 a week. This is less than a day’s earnings at the national minimum wage. This ban must be relaxed, Lily, a survivor, said. The right to work while recovering from exploitation is crucial for a person’s confidence and survival.
Lily has an advanced degree, but is prohibited from seeking most forms of professional work. Without income, she continues to live in a safe house, where she has become skilled at crocheting purses and clothing with donated wool. She said that people ask to buy her creations, but she cannot sell them due to immigration restrictions. “I’ve got talent,” Lily said. “But I still can’t get a job. My education, the jobs I’ve done before, the exploitation doesn’t matter to [the Home Office].”
The widespread practice of restricting the right to work, as a form of immigration enforcement, presents a tangible risk to survivors of exploitation. It also puts asylum seekers who have not yet experienced modern slavery at increased risk of exploitation by subjecting them to financial precarity.
Renew the government’s commitment to support
Civil society continues to try to fill as many of the gaps as it can. From English classes to donated bicycles, the impact of community support on survivors’ recovery was raised frequently by the survivors we interviewed. But it is clear that communities cannot create change alone.
Ji, a human rights activist and former local councillor, explained that “NGOs are helping survivors in the community, but the government’s role in supporting a fair asylum process is just as important.” It is the unavoidable bottleneck. Ji and other volunteers support people as they go through the asylum process, but all the local support in the world cannot speed up the years-long wait for refugee status.
As it stands, few of those fleeing danger are able to access safe routes to claim asylum in the UK. Resettlement options are restricted, apply only to certain countries, and are dependent on asylum seekers’ access to aid workers (e.g. UNHCR) or family connections in the UK. In Ji’s case, there is no dedicated resettlement pathway for North Korean citizens, and it would be unsafe to have one given the amount of government surveillance in the country. As such, fleeing first and asking for asylum later is the only possible exit route for refugees from North Korea.
Yet, under the Illegal Migration Act, asylum seekers will no longer have their cases considered if they claim asylum upon or after arrival in the UK. Instead, both trafficking victims and asylum seekers are at risk of detention in prison-like settings and deportation if they do not have leave to enter before arriving in the UK.
“Unfortunately, in British politics, it is common to speak about human rights issues, but not always to listen to survivors,” Ji said.
The survivors featured in this analysis were interviewed as part of ‘Objective’, a project documenting modern slavery through the everyday objects that have helped survivors rebuild their lives in the face of systematic disbelief. With the exception of Ji, who requested to be identified, their names have been changed to protect them. The project is funded by the Global Reporting Centre and supported by the University of Bath.
