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Invoking the "instrumentalisation" of migration, the UK follows in the EU's footsteps

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28 January 2026

In 2025 the UK announced a new sanctions regime targeting alleged people smugglers. It makes use of the “instrumentalisation of migrants” narrative that has been increasingly invoked by the EU since the early 2020s. This article explains what this narrative is, the powers it is used to justify and how it contributes to the degradation of migrant and refugee rights.

Image: Home Office

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Written and researched by Oriana Campbell-Palmer and Statewatch.

What is the “instrumentalisation of migrants”?

The “instrumentalisation of migrants” is the idea that the movement of people across borders can be manipulated or weaponised by external forces, to destabilise a country or bloc’s infrastructure or political cohesion.

European governments have increasingly accused other states of “instrumentalisation” in recent years, particularly with regard to events around the EU’s borders with Turkey, Belarus and Morocco.

In early 2020, Turkey unilaterally opened its borders with Greece, allowing migrants and refugees to enter the EU. As previously examined in a Statewatch analysis, this was part of an attempt by Turkey to garner more financial and military support from the EU, using migratory flows as leverage.

Greece’s then-minister for Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy argued that this "instrumentalisation of migrants escalated the phenomenon to a hybrid nature threat, directly affecting the EU’s internal stability.” [1]

Similarly, in 2021, Belarus encouraged migrants and asylum seekers to travel to the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland, apparently in response to EU sanctions. In some cases this involved Belarusian authorities issuing visas to people and encouraging their travel to Minsk, then pushing them towards EU borders.

Asylum seekers frequently became trapped between Belarusian border guards on one side and those of the EU on the other. Each side subjected people to torture or ill-treatment.

In the same year, amid diplomatic disputes between Spain and Morocco, Moroccan forces relaxed border controls, resulting in a sudden rise in irregular crossings into Spain at the Ceuta border. This was used by the Spanish government as a pretext for summary deportations at the border, also known as “hot returns”. Some senior European officials voiced their support for Spain's actions at the time.

More recently, the alleged “weaponisation” of migrants as a form of hybrid warfare has been discussed. The European Commission has described such weaponisation as a risk to Europe’s “sovereignty, national security and territorial integrity”. 

Such situations have led to the EU integrating the “instrumentalisation” narrative into EU policy and law. Instrumentalisation plays a key role in the Crisis and Force Majeure Regulation, for instance, where it allows member states to restrict access to or close their borders in response to “emergencies”.

The UK adopts the “instrumentalisation” narrative

In mid-2025 the UK adopted the Global Irregular Migration and Trafficking in Persons Sanctions Regulations 2025, which purportedly seek to “prevent and combat” people-smuggling and trafficking in persons.

The regulations are based on the UK Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018. They lay out provisions for sanctions against “designated persons” allegedly involved in people smuggling, human trafficking or the instrumentalisation of migration, or involved in criminal activities relating to these.

There are three types of sanctions introduced by the rules:

• financial
• immigration; and
• director disqualification.

Financial sanctions allow for the freezing of funds and assets within the UK. Immigration sanctions ban a sanctioned person from entering or remaining in the UK. Director disqualification prevents a sanctioned person from being involved in the promotion, formation or management of a company.

So far, 25 people have been sanctioned by the UK government for alleged involvement in people smuggling, but none for human trafficking or instrumentalisation.

The regulations define “instrumentalisation” as a state or state-linked actor facilitating, encouraging or assisting the movement of a person towards or across that state’s border, or other kinds of movement or travel, “for the purpose of causing the destabilisation” of another state.

Sanctions have been imported into UK immigration policy from the field of counter-terrorism.

This is part of a broader move by the Labour government to use “counter-terrorism powers to tackle organised immigration crime.” Many of those powers, which include the ability to seize and examine migrants’ phones, stem from the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act.

This is also the first time the UK has directly referenced “instrumentalisation” in domestic law.

Whether the use of sanctions in this way will have any meaningful effect is unclear. As pointed out by a House of Lords committee, the government’s explanatory memorandum on the new measures was “conspicuously light on explanation” about the possible impact of the sanctions.

Nor are the government’s answers to the committee’s questions particularly convincing. As one of those questions puts it: “How much of a deterrent is being banned from the UK, when the majority of people smugglers operate outside of the UK?”

Why is the “instrumentalisation” narrative a problem?

By framing migration and seeking asylum as a security issue, EU countries have used the “instrumentalisation” narrative to adopt powers that allow them to declare a state of emergency, shut their borders and suspend asylum procedures.

When eastern EU states closed their borders with Belarus due to alleged “hybrid warfare”, Amnesty International described the use of the narrative as “an excuse to adopt damaging and regressive migration policies and practices”. The Court of Justice of the EU found that law invoked by Lithuania during the alleged hybrid warfare "emergency", limiting the right to claim asylum, was incompatible with EU asylum law.

There is also broad consensus among human rights groups and border externalisation scholars that such policies threaten the principle of non-refoulement – a principle in international human rights law that states no one should be returned to a country where they would face “torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and other irreparable harm.”

By invoking instrumentalisation to justify harsher border measures and to restrict asylum rights, states are sending the implicit message that asylum seekers do not have agency. The implication is that they are simply “pawns” in geopolitical games – or, even worse, weapons being used by hostile states. It also renders the right to asylum conditional, under the justification that the EU must be shielded from “attack”.

The UK’s approach is more constrained than the EU’s. The sanctions are intended to directly target people who facilitate movement, rather than those who are moving – though the ultimate goal, to prevent unauthorised movement, may have deeply harmful effects for people seeking safety.

Even if the UK’s new sanctions regime proves ineffective, as suggested by the House of Lords, it will help to further entrench the hostile narratives around immigration and asylum. As the Migrants’ Rights Network have noted: “A counter-terror approach… enables the Government to bring in powers that would otherwise be seen as excessive and extreme.”

By continuing to associate immigration with security and terrorism, the UK government is playing into the waiting hands of those wanting to build Britain’s walls higher. The equation of “instrumentalisation” with “weaponisation” and “hybrid warfare” sits neatly alongside the use of the phrase “invasion” to describe the movement of people across borders.

Considering the effects already seen in the EU, the introduction of this harmful concept by the UK should be observed closely.

Notes

[1] See ‘Reply from Plakiotakis to Leggeri’, 10 July 2020, https://www.statewatch.org/news/2021/march/eu-pushbacks-scandal-frontex-correspondence-with-national-and-eu-authorities/

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