‘Hostile environment’ caused immense distress in black Caribbeans, study finds

Mobile billboards warning ‘go home or face arrest’ as part of the controversial ‘hostile environment’ policy. Photograph: Rick Findler/Publicity image

The UK’s hostile environment policies had a worse effect on the mental health of black Caribbean people than the coronavirus lockdown had on the wider population, researchers have found.

The study, by academics at University College London and funded by the Wellcome collection, used longitudinal data from 58,087 people, with over 2,000 of these participants being from a black Caribbean background.

Between 2009 and 2020, participants completed the general health questionnaire, which screened for mental health problems, with the results being used in the study as a measure of overall psychological distress including symptoms for depression and anxiety.

The findings were that there was a greater increase in psychological distress among black Caribbeans in the UK after the implementation of the Immigration Act in 2014, compared with their white counterparts.

The difference, a decline of 0.7 points on a mental wellbeing scale of 1-36, was greater than the decline in mental health seen across the whole UK population at the time of the first coronavirus lockdown in 2020.

The study also revealed that black Caribbeans saw a further increase in psychological distress after the Windrush scandal was revealed in 2017, in comparison with their white counterparts.

The increase in psychological distress for people of black Caribbean heritage in the UK as a result of hostile environment policies was also between two to four times greater than the effect of youth unemployment on psychological distress observed in the general population in other studies, according to the research.

Hostile environment policies were devised by the then home secretary Theresa May, who in 2012 said that “the aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration”. The Immigration Act 2014 introduced these policies which intended to limit access to work, benefits, bank accounts, driving licences and other essential services to those who could not prove they had the legal right to live in the UK.

The researchers added that the findings suggest a causal link between hostile environment policies and the Windrush scandal on the larger levels of psychological distress for black Caribbean people in the UK.

Dr Annie Jeffrey, the lead author of the paper, said that the study highlighted the “harms to mental health that the government’s hostile environment policy had on certain groups of people”.

Jeffrey added: “The mental health impacts may have stemmed from the direct impacts of such threats to people’s homes and livelihoods, but could also have resulted from a wider, pervasive sense of racial injustice and bias, faced by a group already experiencing systemic and sometimes institutionalised racism and discrimination.

“When the Windrush scandal dominated the news, there may have been a risk of re-traumatisation for some people, while even those not directly affected may have experienced a form of vicarious trauma or fear of what could happen to them.”

Prof James Kirkbride, co-author of the study, said that the study’s findings “show that government policies can produce, maintain and exacerbate systemic inequities in mental health”.

He added: “Policymakers should consider the mental health impact of immigration policies, as they can impact not only prospective immigrants or people without leave to remain, but also those who are already settled legally in the country, and thus they should design them to minimise all harms including mental health inequalities.”

The Home Office has been approached for comment.