Migration and housing policy in England: rethinking narratives of crisis

England today is embroiled in a housing crisis resulting from decades of policy choices that have eroded affordability. Simultaneously, political parties and popular media have constructed a so-called ‘migrant crisis’ based in the misplaced perception that increasing rates of migration have overburdened public budgets. Though often discussed separately, the housing crisis and the perceived crisis of migration are deeply intertwined outcomes of the same ideological, historical, and economic processes. In this article, we trace a critical history of English housing policy in light of contemporary anti-migrant narratives. Building on work from theorist Stuart Hall, who contended that moral panics around mugging in 1970s Britain served to distract from economic crisis and justify policing agendas, we argue that contemporary anti-migrant narratives have similarly taken root because of widespread economic anxiety in the face of strained public resources and escalating housing costs. We show how the scapegoat produced by contemporary migration panics is not only empirically unclear and conceptually oversimplistic but diverts attention away from longer-term political choices that have exposed large segments of the population to housing insecurity.