Home Office data provides information on people in contact with the Home Office for different reasons, e.g. citizenship or asylum applications. Most Home Office data are only available at the national level, although exceptions include data on asylum seekers in receipt of Section 95 support, refugees resettled through the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and people attending citizenship ceremonies. Local authority data on asylum seekers in receipt of Section 95 support include asylum seekers who are destitute and whose claims are still pending. The local-authority level figures do not include people on Section 98 support, which is provided while a claim for Section 95 support is being considered; or Section 4 support, which may be provided to asylum seekers whose claims have been refused but if there are reasons that temporarily prevent them from leaving the UK.
Population Trends
1.2.2 Data on migrants by reasons for migration (asylum seekers, refugees and international students)
The two charts on this page concern people’s reasons for migration and their legal status in different local areas. These data are not widely available at the local level but there are some figures for asylum seekers, resettled refugees and international students, which you can find by scrolling down. Unfortunately, local data are not available for people who moved for work or family reasons.
How many asylum seekers and refugees are there in each local authority?
Figure 4 shows selected local authorities with the largest number of asylum seekers in receipt of Section 95 support as of 31 March 2020. Section 95 support is provided to destitute asylum seekers until their claim is determined. While Section 95 data are the main source of information on the distribution of asylum seekers across local authorities, they do not include people who are not receiving this destitution allowance (such as people with private incomes) or those whose asylum claims have been determined (with either a positive or negative decision). For more information about Section 95 and asylum in the UK please see the Migration Observatory briefing, Migration to the UK: Asylum and Resettled Refugees.
There are no official data on where refugees live after their asylum claims have been accepted, although the Migration Observatory has produced regional estimates of people who came to the UK for asylum based on APS data. See the Migration Observatory briefing, Where Do Migrants Live in the UK?
Figure 4 also shows local-authority level counts of refugees resettled under the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme and other programmes. These data are cumulative, meaning they count all instances of resettlement regardless of whether the resettled person has since moved to another area.
Refugee resettlement to the UK was suspended on 12 March 2020 due to COVID-19 and will resume when certain conditions are met, including the:
- restarting of flights from refugee hosting countries;
- lifting of restrictions imposed by the governments of those countries and in the UK;
- ability of international partners (UNHCR and IOM) to operate;
- reopening of the UK’s visa application centres (Home Office, 2020: 9).
Figure 4: Number of asylum seekers receiving Section 95 support and resettled refugees (per 1000 population), by local authority, United Kingdom (31 March 2020)
How many international students are there in each local authority?
Figure 5 shows the number of EU and non-EU domiciled higher education students, and the share of international students in the total student population, by local authority. Data on international students are collected by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA).
HESA also publishes data by mode of study – full-time versus part-time – and level of study – degree, postgraduate taught, postgraduate research, etc. Much of the data are freely available on the HESA website, while further breakdowns by individual country of domicile or term-time place of residence can be purchased.
Figure 5: International students as a share of all higher education students, by local authority, United Kingdom (2018/19)
HESA student data provides information on UK students by place of domicile, rather than place of birth or nationality. Domicile is defined as the place of ‘normal residence’ before taking up study. This means that non-UK domiciled students will include some UK citizens who have been living abroad before coming back to the UK to study. The data primarily come from higher education providers and are supplemented by information from the Initial Teacher Training record (for students on a teaching training course) and the Aggregate Offshore record (for students studying overseas).