Focus on Labour Exploitation is often engaged with specific industries, doing deep dives into issues and digging into the relevant labour market enforcement and immigration policies. This is essential for understanding systemic issues, and identifying meaningful, actionable solutions.

We focus on sectors where there is a higher risk of exploitation for workers. But it is also important to step back and look at the wider picture to understand what it is that creates particular risks of exploitation and how these can be addressed.

The fact is this: the overall effect of the immigration system treats migrant workers as disposable. These people are in temporary and precarious jobs in the UK, and as a result of their restrictive immigration status combined with insecurity of their work, are made vulnerable to labour exploitation. 

Land and Sea

FLEX has done significant work on migrant workers in both agricultural and fishing. In both industries, we have seen evidence of significant risk of exploitation, as a direct consequence of visa structures. 

Take the horticultural Seasonal Worker Scheme, used to provide temporary workers to farms in the UK. In our continued research on this, FLEX have found that many of the migrant workers we interviewed faced issues such as underpayment, punishingly high picking targets, constant exhaustion, humiliation, bullying, overcrowded and unsafe accommodation, limited ability to take sick leave and issues accessing basic healthcare. As one worker said,  “regarding work and living conditions — in the UK it’s all luck”. 

Many workers reported receiving less hours than they expected. At the other end of the spectrum, others reported working too much – up to 70 hours a week, leaving them exhausted and with inadequate time to take care of themselves. Around one in seven seasonal workers interviewed reported being shouted at or humiliated. Around 1 in 30 were threatened with being deported.

Meanwhile, in fishing, we see in some ways a similar picture. In order to drive down labour costs, there has been an increasing reliance on migrant workers in the UK fishing industry. Fishing is also a harsh working environment. Migrant fishers, like migrant agriculture workers, also report facing systemic exploitation including unethical recruitment, wage inequalities and excessive overtime. A lack of worker protections and oversight and a significant power imbalance between worker and employer mean these fishers have few options to raise grievances or access support.

In agriculture, a short and restrictive visa structure causes many of the problems. In fishing, the use of an immigration loophole (rather than a work visa) is the issue, criminalising the workers and making them less likely to report exploitation. Many migrant fishers on UK vessels are on the Transit Loophole. The Transit Loophole allows temporary entry for crew joining a vessel that will leave UK waters. It does not grant permission to work or reside in the UK, creating a grey area ripe for exploitation, without means for workers to raise concerns. Migrant fishers are often left with no option but to live and work on boats with limited access to services or rest. One worker with 17 years experience fishing in the UK said:

It depends on the catch […] Sometimes, ma’am, we go without sleep for 36 hours. Sometimes, we rest for 1 hour [during that time].

Another migrant fisher with 12 years experience said 

We didn’t have a weekend at all. Even if we’re in the harbour, we were still working.

And yet in both cases, with different structures in place, we see a system of dependency creating disposability. Across the different, restrictive visas, or lack thereof, migrant workers often feel forced to accept conditions or practices that they would otherwise challenge or walk away from. They may need to pay off large amounts of recruitment debt and cannot afford to travel back home. The alternative is destitution, immigration detention or removal.

A System of Disposable Workers

Sectors like these are worrying enough in their own right. But government plans foreshadow that the already hostile environment for migrant workers will become further expanded and entrenched. 

In May 2025, the Government published its Immigration White Paper including a proposal to extend the standard qualifying period for Indefinite Leave to Remain. The Government has subsequently issued proposed changes to routes to settlement for asylum seekers and refugees in “Restoring Order and Control”, and proposed changes to routes to settlement for a range of migrant groups including migrant workers in “A Fairer Pathway to Settlement”. 

These proposals dictate that workers who are lower paid should be set a baseline of 15 years before they can apply for settlement, with any migrants on benefits potentially facing a baseline of 20 years before they can apply. Workers on lower income are having a pathway to security stripped away, without a care for them as people, with needs, wants, families, ambitions or concerns. There is no way to view this other than solidifying countless people as disposable workers. 

Workers’ rights cannot be contingent on the whims of a visa sponsor, loopholes that force workers to live and work without leaving port, or just blind luck. Workers rights must instead be a guarantee, to all workers, and in a way that understands them fundamentally as people. The government must stop making workers disposable, by scrapping the settlement and immigration proposals which treat workers as such. All work visas need to be based on principles which ensure access to rights, in theory and in practice. These include reducing dependencies on individual employers, and having options such as bridging visas. 

On International Workers Day 2026, we demand that no worker is made disposable.