We need to talk about necessitous economic migrants: Disrupting ‘legitimacy’ in UK migration discourse

Discussions about 'economic migrants' within mainstream media and politics in the UK tend to operate within a morally troubling framing. One dominant view is that a great many asylum seekers are really 'economic migrants' seeking illegitimate access to the UK's economic resources. Those who object to assertions of this kind generally do so by refutation, insisting that asylum seekers are legitimately fleeing persecution and are wronged by the widespread scepticism. In their focus on 'legitimacy', they exclude discussion of those who do migrate partly or wholly to meet their basic material needs. Taken together, these positions marginalise necessitous economic migrants and have serious consequences for health policy, adversely affecting migrants’ access to essential healthcare. In this paper I critically examine this prevailing discourse and urge scholars of health and migration to destabilise it by recognising poverty as a central determinant of both health and migration. I offer arguments for foregrounding necessitous economic migrants in our interventions regarding migration and health, and contend that doing so would make for a more just and ultimately more persuasive way of speaking about necessitous migration as a whole.