By Martin Banks

The implications of Brexit for bi-national UK-EU couples and families were largely neglected in public debates around the UK leaving the European Union, but our new research shows the impacts have been severe. The lack of detailed attention to this population in the Brexit debates is surprising given its significant size. After decades of EU membership and free movement, relationships between people from the UK and EU had become common. By the time of the 2021 Census, over half a million married or cohabiting couples in England and Wales – 1 in 25 couples – had one UK-born and one EU-born partner. Substantial populations of such bi-national couples and their families also lived elsewhere in Europe. In 2017, Teresa May (the then British Prime Minister) promised that ‘no families would be split up’ as a result of Brexit, but this assurance applied only to EU nationals already living in the UK before Brexit, who would have access to the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS).

Since the end of the transition period, couples who could not access the EUSS must navigate the UK’s highly restrictive immigration regime. They include those who were not living together before Brexit, whose relationships began after Brexit, or who were living in the EU (or elsewhere in the world) and missed the 2022 deadline for return. These families are now well-represented in the UK’s immigration statistics – if the EU were a single country, it
would be the second largest nationality applying for UK partner visas (after Pakistan), but such statistics conceal the many others are unable to apply because they could not meet the requirements.

Many countries, including other EU member states, also have restrictive family immigration regimes, but the British system is unusual not just within Europe but globally in the level of its demands. The UK sponsor must have a minimum income of £29,000 per annum, a level that excludes half of UK employees, and the costs of the process exceed £12,000 for those on the shortest 5 year route to settlement (and are even higher for others). Many other
criteria must also be met and exemptions are very limited. The application process is so complex and opaque that even immigration lawyers can struggle with it, so errors are easy to make but often difficult or impossible to correct. The outcome is that many UK-EU couples and families find themselves separated or exiled from life in the UK.

The Brexit Couples research project explored the experiences of the first cohort of UK-EU couples to face the UK partner immigration system after Brexit. Statistics from the UK’s 2021 Census show that such couples are on average more highly educated and in higher level employment than in couples where both partners were born in the UK. Reflecting this, many of our interviewees were highly educated but still struggled with the complexity of the
process and the costs, enduring months of separation or being deterred from even making an application. Those in more precarious circumstances, who had often faced challenges under the EUSS, had little prospect of succeeding. Some had become undocumented, or faced becoming so, as they remained in the UK to maintain their family lives.
Even those who succeeded in obtaining a visa found the process arduous and stressful.

Parents were sometimes separated from children, and many reported negative impacts on financial and mental wellbeing, due to separation, stress, expense and the need to reorganise work and study to meet the income threshold. Families who had moved from the UK to the EU under freedom of movement and now wanted to return, often to care for elderly relatives or help with grandchildren, considered these barriers a betrayal of the promises on
which they had based their lives. Almost uniformly, participants were profoundly shocked by the potential consequences of Brexit for their relationships and life plans.

The upcoming discussions between the EU and UK on a post-Brexit ‘reset’ present an important opportunity to address these issues and relieve some of these harms. This is an urgent necessity. Ongoing connections made through travel, business and education will inevitably lead to the continuing formation of EU-UK bi-national relationships and families.

Developments already on the table for the reset – a youth mobility/experience scheme, and the return of the UK to the Erasmus university exchange scheme – will create even more opportunities for UK and EU citizens to meet, fall in love, and make plans for a future together. Whilst some couples will choose to settle elsewhere in Europe, others will want to live together in the UK. One reason, our interviewees told us, is that the EU partner is often more fluent in English than their UK partner is in a European language. As part of the ‘reset’, negotiators on both sides should ensure that provision is made for protecting family life, and to reduce the damage to EU/UK couples and families created by this blind spot in the original Brexit negotiations.

The Brexit Couples research project is a collaboration between the Universities of Bristol and Exeter funded by the UK’s Social and Economic Research Council. For more information and to download the project report: www.brexitcouples.ac.uk

Professor Katharine Charsley
Professor of Migration Studies
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies
University of Bristol, UK

Professor Helena Wray
Professor of Migration Law
Law School
University of Exeter, UK