Parliamentary launch of the Channel Crossings Final Report

In October we had the last event of the Channel Crossings project, the launch of our final report in parliament. Channel Crossings has been a 3 year ESRC funded investigation into the UK response to small boat Channel crossings.

We have analysed 345 policy and political texts, interviewed politicians and policymakers, done policy time-lining going back to the 1960s, interviewed and held workshops with more than 40 civil society organisations, interviewed 39 people who have crossed the Channel irregularly, and built a dataset of 213 contracts issued by the UK government to companies delivering bordering in the Channel.

Some of our key messages:
– Small boat Channel crossings are the consequence of bordering policies and measures
– People make careful and rational decisions to cross in small boats because no safe routes are available -they are not forced into boats at gunpoint by smugglers
– According to people who have crossed the Channel irregularly that we interviewed, inside Europe state authorities are the greatest sources of violence on their journeys (outside of Europe it’s smugglers)
– People see smugglers as service providers, the only people who will help them out of the situation they face. But that doesn’t mean smugglers are friendly travel agents – this help comes with risks and dangers, and at a price.
– Northern France is a place of destitution, racism, and violence, where human rights seem (to our interviewees) absent.
– Strong border controls create demand for smugglers and efforts to stop smuggling will not succeed in ending small boat Channel crossings
– Over the period since 2018 there has been a mainstreaming of extreme far right rhetoric on migration which has led rather than followed popular conversation, repeated back to the government in the 2024 and 2025 riots and protests
– Businesses involved in border security are making huge profits from the capture, control, detention and deportation of refugees. It is in their material interest that the above rhetoric continues.
– We must connect foreign policy and asylum policy much more systematically if long term and sustainable responses are to be found -both discursively and practically
– Only a reduction of border controls, which would open access to safe routes, can destroy the business model of smuggling and prevent further deaths.
– Any policy responses must centre human dignity and rights, rather than punishment, detention, expulsion, the denial of human rights, and racism.

Thank you to all of the amazing and inspiring people who have worked with us on this project over the past 3 years. We have learnt so much from you.

Read the whole report here below