Fiona Costello, Owen Parker and Catherine Barnard
While the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) has been widely analysed in terms of numbers of those applying and outcomes to applications, far less attention has been paid to the experiences of ethnic minority EU citizens in the post Brexit context. The failure of the Home Office to capture ethnic minority-related data in the context of the EUSS represented a missed opportunity to understand both the ethnic composition of EU citizens in the UK and the particular implications of the EUSS and other policy for racialised groups.
This lack of attention from both government and researchers is surprising given the ways in which past government immigration policy has adversely impacted previous waves of ethnic minority arrivals to the UK, not least of course, the Windrush generation. Our new report, Ethnic Minority EU Citizens in the UK – which draws together quantitative and qualitative research from earlier work of its authors – seeks to fill this gap, exploring the experiences of ethnic minority EU citizens in the UK, and, in particular, drawing attention to the significant challenges encountered by many ethnic minority groups navigating the EUSS.[1]
The scale of the issue is sizeable. Indeed, the population of ethnic minority EU citizens is larger than the 600, 000 Commonwealth citizens that came to the UK between 1948 and 1973. According to census data (2021/22 Censuses), around 800, 000 EU citizens in the UK are from ethnic minority backgrounds, approximately 15% of the EU population in the country. In terms of specific nationalities, Asian Portuguese and Asian Italian people were the largest EU ethnic minority groups according to the census, followed by Black Dutch. Our report also notes that Roma communities are likely to be significantly undercounted, with other research suggesting the actual population may be at least two or three times higher than the approximately 100 thousand that the census data suggests.
The IMA nation-wide survey in 2025[2] demonstrated that ethnic minority EU citizens were three times more likely than White EU nationals to be refused status under the EUSS. And our own research pointed to the fact that many EU ethnic minority citizens had not, for various reasons, applied for EUSS for their children, while others struggled with issues around their families being able to join them in the UK, especially non-EU family members of Asian and Black EU citizens.
Others were at risk of losing their status. Home Office plans in 2026 to begin to curtail the status of those who have failed to convert their ‘pre-settled’ status to ‘settled’- a form of indefinite leave to remain- is likely to have an impact upon the most vulnerable and again, disproportionately, ethnic minority populations. Given historical racialisation, marginalisation and dependency on others to apply to the EUSS, many marginalised EU citizens are likely not to receive, or fail to engage with, the Home Office’s so-called ‘minded to curtail’ notices. This will leave them particularly susceptible to a future loss of status.
These difficulties with the EUSS are now set against the backdrop of the withdrawal, in April 2026, of Home Office funding for specialist EUSS support and advice. Our most recent research mapping the impacts of these cuts points to an ongoing and significant demand for such support from the most marginalised and highlights that a significant (estimated 80%+) percentage of that demand is from ethnic minority EU citizens, primarily Roma.[3]
The vacuum in advice provision will leave many vulnerable to exploitation by unregulated ‘advice sharks’, who charge high fees and, in some cases, control individuals’ access to their own digital status. We have spoken to one individual who paid £150 to an advice shark for help with an (ostensibly free) EUSS application. [4] They were then charged £40-80 each time they returned to the advice shark for an update on the application, paying £700 in total. This individual eventually discovered that the advice shark had lost their documents, including their ID card. They were left without any form of ID and needed to re-apply (late) to the scheme via a paper application; a process that is onerous and time-consuming and usually requires exactly the kind of external accredited support for which the Home Office has withdrawn funding.
Even those with a formal status reported difficulties. For instance, many struggled to engage with and access consular services, and many reported difficulties engaging with airline carriers who are unaware of the ‘digital only’ ‘share code’ system used to verify immigration status. This was causing significant anxiety for those travelling; many faced struggles to re-enter the UK and many suspected racial profiling by border agents and airline staff. Access to welfare was also often challenging, particularly for those with the more precarious ‘pre-settled’ EUSS status.
Beyond issues related to migration status, our report points to some of the broader challenges faced by ethnic minority EU citizens in the UK, who tended to be less qualified than their White counterparts and less likely to progress to higher education. It reports their experiences of both institutional and interpersonal racism in the post-Brexit UK. For instance, Black Portuguese research participants reported experiences of explicit racism. And our research on Roma highlighted their particular anxieties following the Harehill (Leeds) riots in 2024 and the anti-migrant riots in Ballymena (Northern Ireland) in 2025. The broader context of far-right mobilisation, marches and rhetoric was certainly an emotionally challenging one for all ethnic minority populations in the UK, including EU migrants.
Both ethnic minority EU citizens and Windrush migrants arrived in the UK with a right to reside, but changes to domestic policies and law required migrants in both groups to proactively acquire a new status; a requirement that would leave many without an accessible provable status.
The UK’s ‘hostile environment’ is punitive for those lacking proof, leaving many vulnerable to social and economic exclusion, and even removal. While the injustices of the so-called ‘Windrush scandal’ prompted some apology and introspection on the part of the British government, the prospect of a repeat of those injustices, with racialised EU citizens looms large in post-Brexit Britain.
[1] The report was co-authored by Owen Parker (University of Sheffield), Minhea Cuibus (Migration Observatory, University of Oxford), Catherine Barnard (University of Cambridge) and Fiona Costello, Birmingham Law School. The3million also shared useful data and much of the work was funded by the EU Delegation to the UK. A copy of the report can be accessed here.
[2] For more: IMA-Citizens-Rights-Survey-report.pdf
[3] Forthcoming report: Emily Lawton and Owen Parker, ‘Mapping EU Settlement Scheme Support in the UK’.
[4] For more: Advice sharks are benefitting from the cost-of-living crisis – UK in a changing Europe