Restoring control or reinforcing exclusion? UK immigration policy and international students

sarahcawthra | 20 May 2026

By Chathushka Kiriella

“Is it still worth staying in the UK?”

That’s a question many international students are asking themselves now. Not about their coursework or career ambitions, but about whether the future they planned is still possible. For many, the answer is becoming increasingly uncertain.

In May 2025, the UK government released its white paper Restoring Control Over Immigration, outlining a series of reforms aimed at reducing net migration. While framed as necessary and pragmatic, the changes have had a profound effect on how international students experience studying and imagining a future in the UK.

But beyond the policy details lies a deeper shift. International students are no longer framed as global learners or future professionals but increasingly as a potential risk and ‘regulated, conditional migrants’.

A system that changed midway

For years, the UK presented a clear and structured pathway for international students: study, gain work experience, and potentially transition into long term employment and settlement. Students made life changing decisions based on that promise.

They paid significantly higher tuition fees than domestic students. They navigated complex visa processes, proved their English proficiency, and contributed financially through visa costs and healthcare surcharges. Many invested not just money, but years of planning and personal sacrifice. Now, that pathway is narrowing.

Recent reforms include:

Restricting dependants to PhD level students only
Reducing post study work visas from two years to 18 months
Raising the skilled worker salary threshold significantly
Extending settlement timelines

Individually, each change may seem technical. Together, they fundamentally reshape what is achievable.

Students who arrived under one set of expectations now find themselves navigating a very different reality.

The human impact behind the policy

What these changes look like on paper is one thing, what they feel like in practice is another. Many students I work with are experiencing growing anxiety, not because they lack ambition or ability, but because the goalposts have moved.

Carefully mapped plans are becoming unworkable. Career routes that once seemed realistic now feel out of reach. For some, the UK is no longer a place to build a future, but a temporary stop with an uncertain ending.

And yet, these are students who did everything “right.” They followed official guidance. They complied with every requirement. They invested in a system they believed was stable.

When that system shifts, the impact is not just logistical. It is deeply personal.

The power of language

Alongside these policy changes, there has been a noticeable shift in how migration and migrants are discussed. The white paper uses terms like “explosion,” “burden,” and “loopholes.” These are not neutral descriptions. They shape how people understand the issue.

When migration is framed as a crisis, those within it, regardless of their legal status, risk being seen through the same lens.

One of the most concerning aspects is the lack of distinction between different types of migrants. International students, who are legally sponsored, financially contributing, and closely monitored, are often folded into broader narratives about migration pressures. This blurring matters.

It creates a perception that all migrants are equally responsible for strain on public services or infrastructure, despite vast differences in their circumstances and contributions. Language does not just reflect policy. It reinforces it.

What is missing from the conversation

While the economic contribution of international students is often acknowledged, the conversation rarely goes further. Missing are the less measurable but equally important contributions: the diversity of perspectives in classrooms, the exchange of ideas across cultures and the role students play in shaping globally connected institutions.

International students are not just fee payers or future workers. They are participants in a shared academic space, contributing to knowledge, debate and innovation.

Reducing them to numbers or targets overlooks the very purpose of higher education as a global and collaborative endeavour.

When policy enters the classroom

As an academic, I have found my role changing in ways I did not expect. My work is no longer just about teaching and research. Increasingly, it involves helping students make sense of policies, navigate uncertainty and rethink their futures.

The questions I receive have shifted:

“Can I still stay after I graduate?” “Should I bring my family?” “Is there any point applying for jobs here?”

These are not questions I was trained to answer.

At the same time, while universities do have support systems in place for international students including the Immigration Advice Service team, Careers services, and the Global Centre. There are limits to what these teams can do when wider policy decisions are beyond their control. In many ways, they become messengers navigating constantly shifting immigration and political landscapes. Although staff continue to support and guide students as best they can, universities themselves are also operating within constraints, creating a difficult position where institutional support can only go so far against broader political and policy changes.

On one hand, I am part of an institution that recruits international students and operates within government frameworks. On the other, I see firsthand the emotional and practical consequences of those frameworks. There is a constant tension between compliance and care.

For those of us who were once international students ourselves, that tension is even more pronounced. Students often see us as proof that the system works, a “success story.” That perception builds trust, but it also comes with responsibility.

We become advisors, advocates and sometimes simply listeners, absorbing the uncertainty students carry. This is rarely recognised as part of academic work, but it is becoming increasingly central to it.

A question of responsibility

The current narrative often places responsibility on students, suggesting misuse of the system or excessive burden but this overlooks a key point.

International students operate within a system designed and regulated by governments and institutions. If there are gaps, inconsistencies, or exploitation within that system, responsibility does not lie solely with those who entered it in good faith.

Holding institutions accountable for quality and oversight is necessary but broad restrictions that affect all students risk punishing those who have done nothing wrong.

What kind of system are we building?

The UK continues to position itself as a global destination for education. Universities actively recruit international students, highlighting opportunity, diversity and long term potential.

At the same time, immigration policies are becoming more restrictive, more conditional and more uncertain. This raises a fundamental question: can a system invite international students in while simultaneously limiting their ability to stay, contribute, and belong?

Conclusion

Policies aimed at restoring control may achieve certain political objectives. But they also reshape the experiences of those within the system, students and educators alike.

International students are not abstract figures in migration statistics. They are individuals who make significant investments, contribute meaningfully to academic communities and plan their futures based on the rules set before them. When those rules change, the consequences extend far beyond policy documents.

If the UK is to remain a genuinely global education hub, it must move beyond seeing international students as numbers to be reduced and recognise them as people to be supported. Because the question students are asking now, “Is it still worth it?”, is not just about their future.

It is about the kind of higher education system the UK wants to be.

Exploring the experience of neurodivergent engineers in the workplace: Re-crafting engineering?

ripleywk | 17 April 20235 April 2023

Dr Vanda Papafilippou & Miss Lucy Downes

The neurodiversity paradigm views neurodiversity as natural variations in human cognition that should be equally valued and celebrated (Chapman, 2022) thus challenging earlier research (and practice) that tended to take a deficit perspective and referred to ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, etc. as disorders that needed to be ‘treated’ (Chapman and Bovell, 2022). Nevertheless, despite the increased awareness of the strengths of neurodivergent thinking and the value that diverse perspectives can bring to organizations (Kirby and Smith, 2021), neurodivergent people may experience discrimination and marginalization once disclosing to their employer (Baldridge and Swift, 2013; Johnson and Joshi, 2017). What is more, to date there is limited research that explores the perspectives of neurodivergent employees to gain an understanding of contextual factors that might create barriers in the workplace (Doyle and McDowall, 2021) but also about how neurodivergent people approach work in general.

This blog entry looks at neurodiversity from both an academic/research and practitioner perspective, offering some practical future directions for employers. We are specifically focusing on an aspect of our findings: how neurodivergent engineers engage in job crafting. In order to do so, we draw upon Lazazzara et al.’s (2020) job crafting process model which considers the job crafting motives, the impact of context, the forms of job crafting, personal factors and the job crafting consequences.

Our exploratory study focused on how neurodivergent engineers (all sectors, including software) experience the entire employee lifecycle (i.e., recruitment, career development and progression). We chose to focus on engineering as, anecdotally, there are many neurodivergent individuals in the profession as neurominority thinking strengths align to engineering skills, such as creative thinking and attention to detail (Engineering Council, 2022; Loiacono and Ren, 2018).

Background

Wrzesniewski and Dutton (2001) noted that the need for control over work, establishing a positive self-image and connections with others motivate to engage in job crafting, which, in its turn, is argued to enhance the person-career fit (De Vos et al., 2020) and stimulate employees’ career growth (Hall and Las Heras, 2010). Employees may be proactively and/or reactively motivated to craft their jobs and that the form of job crafting depends also on contextual factors, such as organisational climate and job design components (e.g., resources, workload, demands) (Lazazzara et al., 2020).

However, to date there are no studies on how neurodivergent employees might engage in job crafting. An important gap considering that neurodiverse employees are often excluded and marginalised in the workplace due to negative stereotyping (Den Houting, 2019; Patton, 2019; Priscott and Allen, 2021) and negative organisational cultures (Kapp et al., 2019; Saleh et al., 2022) and this might impact their self-confidence, relationships with colleagues and control over work (Booth, 2016; Sheppard et al., 2016). Taking into consideration that there is little research on neurodiversity and employment (Doyle and MacDowall, 2021) this gap becomes even more pertinent. Therefore, we asked:

What processes can be identified that illustrate when and how neurodiverse engineers engage in job crafting?

How do contextual factors (i.e., organisational climate and job design) influence neurodiverse engineers to engage in job crafting?

This was a qualitative study drawing upon in-depth semi-structured interviews. We interviewed 35 engineers (i.e., chemical, mechanical, aerospace, civil, software, oil & gas), male (24) and female (11), mostly of White British, one White Australian and 2 from ethnic minority backgrounds (British Asian, British Black). Participants were mainly employed (i.e., in large and smaller organisation) apart from two who were self-employed/ contractors. The participants were recruited using purposive sampling and access was sought via personal contacts, social media (Facebook groups, Twitter, LinkedIn), support from large Engineering organisations (HR and Employee Resource Groups), the Engineering Council, and snowballing. The interview schedule was developed following guidance from Norris et al. (2020) to acknowledge the challenges that autistic participants in particular might encounter. Towards this end we have also included semantic prompting (i.e., a general prompt before asking for a specific instance) and visual prompting.

Findings

To analyse our findings, we drew upon Lazazzara et al.’s (2020) job crafting process model which considers the job crafting motives, the impact of context (supportive vs. constraining), the forms of job crafting (i.e., approach job crafting, avoidance crafting and crafting in other domains), personal factors (supportive vs. constraining) and the job crafting consequences.

The engineers in our sample seemed to engage in job crafting mostly reactively (e.g., because of pressure to behave as ‘engineers’ and work following a specific pattern) but also proactively (e.g., shape their careers/roles according to their strengths, use some strategies in order to improve their performance), depending on how supportive their organisational context was. However, most of them, and especially those in larger organisations, appeared to be experiencing constraints not only due to the organisational context (e.g., negative stereotyping, lack of support from HR and especially their line managers) but also professional standards (e.g., they struggled to ‘fit the box’ of being a chartered engineer). In some cases, line managers ruled out progression opportunities based on the stereotypical assumption that neurodiverse individuals lack the social skills needed to manage a team. The forms of job crafting that are emerging so far are: approach crafting (e.g., adding tasks they enjoyed doing more of, establishing different ways of managing their teams), avoidance crafting (e.g., avoiding networking or socialising, avoiding for going for certain promotions) but also crafting in other domains (e.g., adjusting their working hours when working remotely, changing their physical environment, etc.).

Practical Implications

Our findings can provide a set of practical implications for Engineering as a sector and organisations. Given the current skills shortage of engineers (Armitage et al., 2020), it is of crucial importance that the sector adapts its practices to ensure that it attracts, recruits, and retains neurodiverse engineers through building a genuinely inclusive professional culture which is also reflected on the criteria for chartership (i.e., being less prescriptive). The key learnings for HR are:

Commitment to an inclusive workplace culture

Organisations need to move away from deficit thinking around neurodiversity and work towards a more positive and inclusive culture which in its turn, will provide a supportive context for job crafting and most importantly enhance the sense of organisational and professional belonging.

Retention of talent: revisiting job descriptions career progression criteria

Organisations need to carefully reconsider job design (e.g., Do all engineers need to approach the problem in the same way? What skills and experience are essential?) and ensure that they offer autonomy in carrying out job activities (but also support when neurodiverse employees might struggle with their work-life balance).

Performance management

All line managers should be trained in how to manage, support, and review the progress of neurodiverse employees. HR could also evaluate performance management, using a neurodiversity lens, and identify which encouraged behaviours (e.g., being ‘diplomatic’) or practices (e.g.., networking) might impede career progression and/or influence what considered ‘good performance’.

References

Armitage, L., Bourne, M., Di Simone, J., Jones, A. and Neave, S. (2020). Engineering UK 2020: Educational pathways into engineering. EngineeringUK.

Baldridge, D.C. and Swift, M.L. (2013) Withholding requests for disability accommodation: The role of individual differences and disability attributes. Journal of Management. 39 (3), pp.743-762.

Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Stott, C., Bolton, P. and Goodyer, I. (1997) Is there a link between engineering and autism?. Autism. 1 (1), pp.101-109.

Booth, J. (2016) Autism equality in the workplace: Removing barriers and challenging discrimination. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Chapman, R. (2020) Defining neurodiversity for research and practice. In Chapman, R., ed. (2020) Neurodiversity Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 218-220.

Chapman, R. and Bovell, V. (2022) Neurodiversity, advocacy, anti-therapy. In Matson, J. and Sturmey, P. (2022) Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder. Springer, Cham, pp. 1519-1536.

Costello, E., Kilbride, S., Milne, Z., Clarke, P., Yilmaz, M. and MacMahon, S.T. (2021) September. A Professional Career with Autism: Findings from a Literature Review in the Software Engineering Domain. In European Conference on Software Process Improvement. Springer, Cham.

De Vos, A., Van der Heijden, B. I. J. M. and Akkermans, J. (2020). Sustainable careers: Towards a conceptual model. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 117: 103196, pp. 1-13.

Den Houting, J. (2019). Neurodiversity: An insider’s perspective. Autism. 23 (2), pp. 271-273.

Doyle, N. and McDowall, A. (2021) Diamond in the rough? An “empty review” of research into “neurodiversity” and a road map for developing the inclusion agenda. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal. 41 (3), pp.352-382.

Engineering Council (2022) Neurodiversity Celebration Week. Available from: Engineering Council (engc.org.uk) [Accessed 4 January 2023].

Hall, D. T. and Las Heras, M. (2010) Reintegrating job design and career theory: Creating not just good jobs but smart jobs. Journal of Organizational Behavior. 31, pp. 448–462.

Johnson T, D. and Joshi, A. (2016) Dark clouds or silver linings? A stigma threat perspective on the implications of an autism diagnosis for workplace well-being. Journal of Applied Psychology. 101 (3), pp. 430–449.

Kapp, S.K., Steward, R., Crane, L., Elliott, D., Elphick, C., Pellicano, E. and Russell, G. (2019) People should be allowed to do what they like: Autistic adults’ views and experiences of stimming. Autism. 23 (7), pp.1782-1792.

Kirby, A. and Smith, T. (2021) Neurodiversity at work: Drive innovation, performance and productivity with a neurodiverse workforce. London: Kogan Page Publishers.

Lazazzara, A., Tims, M. and de Gennara, D. (2020) The process of reinventing a job: A meta–synthesis of qualitative job crafting research. Journal of Vocational Behavior. 116: 103267, pp.1-18.

Loiacono, E.T. and Ren, H. (2018) Building a Neurodiverse High-tech Workforce. MIS Quarterly Executive. 17 (4), pp.263-279.

Norris, J. E., Crane, L. and Maras, K. (2020) Interviewing autistic adults: Adaptations to support recall in police, employment, and healthcare interviews. Autism. 24 (6), pp. 1506–1520.

Patton, E. (2019) Autism, attributions and accommodations: Overcoming barriers and integrating a neurodiverse workforce. Personnel Review. 48 (4), pp.915-934.

Priscott, T. and Allen, R.A. (2021) Human capital neurodiversity: an examination of stereotype threat anticipation. Employee Relations: The International Journal. 43 (5), pp. 1067-1082.

Saleh, M.C., Chang, H.Y., Bruyère, S.M. and Vogus, T.J. (2022) Employment Selection Methods and Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder. In: Bruyère, S.M. and Colella, A. eds., (2022) Neurodiversity in the Workplace: Interests, Issues, and Opportunities. New York: Routledge.

Sheppard, E., Pillai, D., Wong, G.T.L., Ropar, D. and Mitchell, P. (2016) How easy is it to read the minds of people with autism spectrum disorder?. Journal of autism and developmental disorders. 46 (4), pp.1247-1254.

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001) Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. The Academy of Management Review. 26 (2), pp. 179–201.

The “Necessary evil” of a compliance role for HR: Examining the day-to-day realities of human resources (HR) practice

ripleywk | 8 November 20229 November 2022

Dr Helen Mortimore and Dr Catherine Mackintosh

The problem for HR practitioners

When was the last time you heard somebody praise their HR department: “oh, they’re so helpful” or “they’re great at what they do”? HR professionals battle for credibility in organisations and struggle to convince others of their contribution. Many organisational members probably do not really know or have any interest in knowing what HR practitioners actually do on a day-to-day basis, never mind understand what doing it “well” might look like. Even more challenging for HR professionals though, is this lack of understanding and interest in the realities of HR practice is arguably just as true of many of the academics who study it.

The current narrative of most HR academics, practitioners, and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) emphasises the value of HR professionals as business partners to line managers who carry out devolved people management activity (e.g., Guest, 1987; Ulrich, 1997). In other words, it is suggested that to be strategic, HR practitioners should advise but not intervene with line managers who “do” people management. This idea of the “devolution” of HR management (HRM) is broadly accepted (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007) but, nevertheless, is problematic for practitioners. It creates a tension where they are required to relinquish power to line managers but the accountability for HR outcomes remains with them (Sheehan et al., 2014). Current research tends to under-play and under-examine the influence of national regulation on HR practice (Gilbert et al., 2015). In the UK, where our research was undertaken, this means there is not sufficient consideration of how protective employment law, such as the Equality Act (2010), influence the work of HR professionals. In the UK, tribunals are the enforcement option for handling employment rights and HR practitioners are tasked by their organisations with managing legal risk and avoiding claims. However, this aspect of HR practice is near impossible to fulfil if HR professionals fully embrace the logic of devolution. Instead, the regulatory context creates an “interventionary” compliance role for HR, yet the HRM narrative that promotes devolution delegitimises such activity and may leave HR practitioners reluctant to promote this element of their role.

Our research

To gain insight into how HR professionals understand and navigate this tension between devolving people management activity to line managers, and the need to ensure compliance with national regulation, in our study we focused on talking to HR practitioners about what they actually do day-to-day (rather than what HR work “ought” to be). Our findings indicate that HR practitioners frame their role as both advisory and interventionary: they take an advisory, non-interventionary role when line managers’ decision-making is within a ‘safe zone’ but intervene when line managers risk provoking a tribunal claim. Both HR and line managers, from the perspective of the HR professionals, accept the need and value of this compliance role, seeing it as a “necessary evil” to protect the organisation.

Our findings highlight the strategies HR practitioners use to encourage compliant behaviour from line managers. At times, HR practitioners need to involve and garner support from those higher up the organisational hierarchy (e.g., the senior management team) in order to compel line manager action. As such, our data reveals that even in scenarios where a HR practitioner does not have the power to dictate line manager decision making (e.g., because HR lacks status within the organisation or the individual practitioner is more junior) they still have methods of moving between an advisory and interventionary approach to working with their stakeholders. When they consider it necessary to intervene, HR practitioners will also highlight the risk of tribunal claims and/or procure specialist legal advice to persuade line managers to adopt a specific course of action. This evidences how line managers can be unwilling to accept the recommendations of HR practitioners without the reinforcement of external legal advice, and therefore the challenges HR professionals face in establishing credibility with organisational actors. Importantly, while HR practitioners have strategies for overcoming these challenges and to influence line manager behaviour, these tactics do not necessarily resolve their struggles for status.

Despite HR practitioners use of employment lawyers to persuade and appease line managers, they do not simply regurgitate the third-party advice they have sourced. Our findings also demonstrate how HR professionals add value through their own balancing of the legal position and the specific needs and context of their organisation (e.g., taking into account the employer’s management of previous similar cases). However, HR professionals will not necessarily disclose this value adding activity to line managers as it may undermine the force and influence of obtaining the third-party advice. As such, aspects of HR’s compliance role, the skills and knowledge that they use to support positive outcomes for organisations, can go unseen and undervalued.

So what?

Based on the findings of our study, we propose that the value of and craft involved in HR’s compliance role has been downplayed by academics and the profession. We bring into question the nature of HR business partnering in organisations by highlighting that in their day-to-day working lives practitioners move between interventionary or advisory approaches to working with managers. We therefore suggest that intervention is not incommensurate with a HR Business Partner role but can be an essential element of it, and a component of effective HRM. Consequently, we call for researchers and the CIPD to acknowledge the need for and value of HR’s regulatory and compliance responsibilities in support of HR departments and professionals more clearly demonstrating their contribution to organisations.

If you are interested in this research and would like to know more, please contact: helen.mortimore@uwe.ac.uk or catherine.mackintosh@uwe.ac.uk

Tag: UWE