Before Covid-19 around a quarter of the UK’s rough sleeping population were non-UK nationals, with the proportion rising above half in some metropolitan areas. The UK government’s targeting of rough-sleeping EU citizens for ‘administrative removal’ between 2010–2017 reflected a trend in social policy towards enforcement- rather than support-based ‘solutions’ to migrant homelessness. Changes to the Immigration Rules in late 2020 to make rough sleeping a ground for refusal or cancellation of permission to be in the UK represent a revival of this tendency. This commentary analyses UK policies targeting rough sleeping non-UK nationals for deportation from a practitioner’s perspective – the author ran a rights project for homeless migrants between 2018 and 2021.
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