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This research project aims to facilitate the formulation and development of policies and services that support the integration of British National Overseas (BN(O) migrants into British society.
This research project will run from May 2023 to April 2026 and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
- Background
The Home Office announced in October 2020 that all Hong Kong residents with British National (Overseas), or BN(O), status and their close family members could apply for visas to move to the UK. Up to 5.4 million of Hong Hong's 7.5 million residents are potentially eligible under the BN(O) scheme. This gives them the right to work in the UK and provides a path to full British citizenship.
Although there is huge uncertainty about the take-up of the BN(O) scheme, we are probably witnessing one of the largest migrant inflows to the UK from a single source country ever recorded. The number of Hong Kong-born residents in the UK could triple or even quadruple within a few years. The Windrush generation of the 1950s and 1960s, the East African Asians of the 1960s and 1970s, and the Central and Eastern European migrants from the mid-2000s have all made lasting changes to the social fabric of the UK. We believe the arrival of the BN(O) migrants will also bring profound social and economic changes in Britain in the decades to come and raise questions such as:
- How will the BN(O)s fare in the UK?
- What are their needs and experience?
- How do they compare with other migrant/minority ethnic groups?
- How many of the BN(O)s will return to Hong Kong after a few years?
In this project, we aim to collect systematic, reliable, and representative data that will allow us to answer these questions with confidence. Such information will facilitate the development of policies and services that support the integration of the BN(O) migrants into British society.
- Methodology
We will carry out a large scale social survey, aiming to interview about 2,000 BNO migrants from 1,000 households initially, and follow them over three years.
- Team
Principal investigator
- Professor Tak Wing Chan
Co-investigators
- Professor Jonathan Portes, King's College London
- Madeleine Sumption, University of Oxford
Survey manager
- Dori Lau