Who Is Crossing the English Channel?

Just this week, five more people, including a child, died when trying to cross the English Channel by boat. The news came the same day that Rishi Sunak’s government pushed through the next steps of its Rwanda legislation, supposed to deter such attempts to cross from happening. The Rwanda bill has sparked backlash, with a majority of the UK public doubtful that it will cut down on small boat arrivals. 

The new law will state that any asylum seeker who has arrived in the UK “illegally” after January 2022 could be deported to Rwanda, where their asylum requests would be processed in the East African nation instead of in the UK. Detected irregular arrivals are largely those who have arrived to the UK by small boats without recognised documentation and as the following chart shows, many of the countries of origin are currently in a state of war or conflict. 

According to official data published on the UK government website, a total of 114,345 people were recorded as having crossed the English Channel from France to the United Kingdom by small boat between 2018 and 2023. An analysis by the Migration Observatory reveals that this route has become increasingly busy in recent years, with a peak of 45,789 people detected making the crossing in 2022. Last year, the official figure was 29,437. 

Three quarters of all small boat arrivals between 2018 and 2023 were nationals from just six countries: Iran (21,546), Afghanistan (16,636), Iraq (15,388), Albania (14,480), Syria (8,528) and Eritrea (8,068). The share of nationals from each country ebbs and flows per year depending on various factors, however. For example, where only 32 Indian boat arrivals were reported in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Migration Observatory, that figure had risen to 670 in the same period in 2023.