Disabled by Design

• The Hostile Environment actively disables people, producing physical and mental impairment through destitution, stress, exclusion and denial of support.
• Disablement occurs throughout the asylum system, intensifying sharply when asylum is refused and all support is withdrawn.
• Destitution deepens illness and prevents recovery, leaving people unable to access healthcare, manage long‑term conditions, or meet basic needs.
• Participation, family life, and health are systematically undermined, driving isolation, mental distress and long‑term harm.
• These impacts violate disability rights, exposing a fundamental contradiction between the UK’s legal obligations and hostile immigration policy.
• The Hostile Environment is antithetical to human dignity and flourishing, as is powerfully evident when examining the Hostile Environment through the lens of disability.

• End the Hostile Environment. The systemic marginalisation of people refused asylum and others without immigration status causes destitution and, ultimately, disablement. The apparatus of the Hostile Environment established under previous governments – immigration control throughout daily life – remains in place and must be dismantled. As part of this, urgently end NHS charging, which creates huge barriers to healthcare for people in desperate need. These barriers directly contradict our legal and moral obligations to ensure disabled people can access the healthcare they need as a result of their disability. They also create disablement and are therefore profoundly destructive. While NHS charging continues, refused asylum seekers in all parts of the UK should be exempt from the NHS charging regime, as is already the case in Scotland.
• End “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) rules. Restrictions on access to public funds deny people basic safety nets on the basis of immigration status. This both creates disability and prevents disabled people from accessing urgently needed support.
• Create a simplified route to settled status for people who have made the UK their home and are living here long-term. This report includes accounts of people living in the UK long-term but trapped in destitution due to lack of immigration status. Living in extended limbo was shown to create disability. This is cruel, serves no good purpose, and must end.
• Restore the right to work for people seeking asylum. The ban on work consigns people seeking asylum to deep poverty and, when asylum support is cut off, to destitution. It profoundly marginalises people and contributes to disablement.

• Ensure everyone seeking asylum and everyone refused asylum can access sufficient support to meet basic needs and live independently, with dignity. Some people cannot work, and disabled people often face punitive barriers to accessing the support they need. This must change and must not be replicated within the asylum system.
• Restore the right to asylum and create a protection-focused asylum system. Participants were clear that disablement (and further disablement) arise from hostility embedded across the asylum system. The findings also show how profoundly dangerous the ongoing attack on refugee rights is.
• Remove the UK’s reservation excluding immigration decisions from obligations under the CRPD. It is not justifiable to place immigration decisions outside of concerns for disabled people’s rights and flourishing. This research demonstrates the fallacy of separating disability rights from migrant rights.
• Address the demonisation of people seeking asylum and their exclusion from the wider community, and recognise “community” as including refugees and asylum seekers. This research shows that marginalisation and dehumanisation have destructive, and often disabling, impacts on people’s lives.
• Meet the UK’s awareness-raising obligations under the CRPD by explicitly including awareness raising about the needs of disabled people within the migration and asylum system. The CRPD obliges States to raise awareness throughout society regarding disabled people and to foster respect for the rights and dignity of disabled people, but this research highlighted how often disability is invisible or sidelined in discussions and thinking about migration and asylum policy.

Support advocacy for a humane asylum system

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On 14th May, report authors Dr Nicolette Busuttil and Dr Sophie Cartwright were joined by Dr Clara Della Croce (SOAS) and Dr Rebecca Yeo (Exeter) to launch the report and explore some key themes in the disability rights and asylum sector.

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