Hong Kong BNO Migrants Panel Survey
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: Social Science
Abstract
In response to the erosion of political rights and, in particular, the imposition of a National Security Law in Hong Kong, the Home Office announced in October 2020 that all Hong Kong residents with British National Overseas (BNO) status and their close family members could apply for visas to move to the UK. Up to 5.4 million of Hong Hong's 7.5 million residents are potentially eligible under the BNO scheme. This gives them the right to work in the UK and provides a path to full British citizenship.
This announcement represents a radical shift in UK immigration policy. Previously, BNOs (despite the name) had very limited rights. In the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 50,000 Hong Kong residents and their family members were given the right of abode in the UK, against the background of substantial political opposition. By contrast, this much more wide-ranging scheme has so far been largely uncontroversial.
There is huge uncertainty about the take-up of the scheme. The Home Office estimates that between 123,000 and 153,700 people might come to the UK in the first year, and between 258,000 and 322,400 people over the first five years. It also gives a plausible upper-bound estimate of one million. The limited data that is available so far suggests that flows have been significant. There were 103,990 BNO visa applications between 31 January 2021 and 31 December 2021.
With the BNO scheme, we are witnessing one of the largest migrant inflows to the UK from a single source country ever recorded. The number of Hong Kong-born residents in the UK could triple or even quadruple within a few years. The Windrush generation of the 1950s and 1960s, the East African Asians of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Central and Eastern European migrants from the mid-2000s have all made lasting changes to the social fabrics of the UK. We believe the arrival of the BNO migrants will also bring profound social, economic, and perhaps political changes in Britain in the decades to come.
How will the BNOs fare, socially and economically, in the UK? What are their needs and experience? How do they compare with members of other migrant/minority ethnic groups? How many of the BNOs will return to Hong Kong after a few years? At this point we do not have systematic, reliable, and representative data that will allow us answer these questions with confidence. To fill in the gap, we will design and implement a survey of the Hong Kong BNO migrants in the UK. With the cooperation of the Home Office, we will be able to draw a representative sample of 2,000 BNO migrants. We will interview them three times over three years. This survey will give us information about the BNOs as they arrive. It will also tell us their evolving outcomes and trajectories as they settle in the country.
To our knowledge, this will be the first systematic, longitudinal, social science study that tracks a major migrant group (almost) from the time of their arrival in the UK. We will analyse the BNOs' integration into the UK economy and society, with research strands covering topics such as labour market outcomes, migration processes and intentions, discrimination, social networks, and social cohesion. Our data will become a rich resource for other scholars and policy analysts in the field of migration research. This project will deepen our understanding of the BNOs and of the process of migrant integration in general.
This announcement represents a radical shift in UK immigration policy. Previously, BNOs (despite the name) had very limited rights. In the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre, 50,000 Hong Kong residents and their family members were given the right of abode in the UK, against the background of substantial political opposition. By contrast, this much more wide-ranging scheme has so far been largely uncontroversial.
There is huge uncertainty about the take-up of the scheme. The Home Office estimates that between 123,000 and 153,700 people might come to the UK in the first year, and between 258,000 and 322,400 people over the first five years. It also gives a plausible upper-bound estimate of one million. The limited data that is available so far suggests that flows have been significant. There were 103,990 BNO visa applications between 31 January 2021 and 31 December 2021.
With the BNO scheme, we are witnessing one of the largest migrant inflows to the UK from a single source country ever recorded. The number of Hong Kong-born residents in the UK could triple or even quadruple within a few years. The Windrush generation of the 1950s and 1960s, the East African Asians of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Central and Eastern European migrants from the mid-2000s have all made lasting changes to the social fabrics of the UK. We believe the arrival of the BNO migrants will also bring profound social, economic, and perhaps political changes in Britain in the decades to come.
How will the BNOs fare, socially and economically, in the UK? What are their needs and experience? How do they compare with members of other migrant/minority ethnic groups? How many of the BNOs will return to Hong Kong after a few years? At this point we do not have systematic, reliable, and representative data that will allow us answer these questions with confidence. To fill in the gap, we will design and implement a survey of the Hong Kong BNO migrants in the UK. With the cooperation of the Home Office, we will be able to draw a representative sample of 2,000 BNO migrants. We will interview them three times over three years. This survey will give us information about the BNOs as they arrive. It will also tell us their evolving outcomes and trajectories as they settle in the country.
To our knowledge, this will be the first systematic, longitudinal, social science study that tracks a major migrant group (almost) from the time of their arrival in the UK. We will analyse the BNOs' integration into the UK economy and society, with research strands covering topics such as labour market outcomes, migration processes and intentions, discrimination, social networks, and social cohesion. Our data will become a rich resource for other scholars and policy analysts in the field of migration research. This project will deepen our understanding of the BNOs and of the process of migrant integration in general.
