Ethnic Minority EU Citizens and the EUSS

A new report, Ethnic Minority EU Citizens in the UK (February 2026), highlights the barriers racialised EU citizens are experiencing in post-Brexit Britain. With funding from the EU Delegation the report is a result of a collaboration between academics and organisations working with migrants from racialised communities across the UK navigating post-Brexit systems. Here, we run through the findings related to immigration status.

Around 800,000 EU citizens living in the UK are from ethnic minority backgrounds, roughly 15% of the EU population. The report highlights how these populations are disproportionately impacted because they face intersecting structural disadvantages and inequalities when they engage with the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) and their rights. Yet ethnicity has not been recorded as part of Home Office EUSS data, creating a concerning gap in understanding the lived experience of diverse populations. This lack of data has material and significant consequences, limiting the ability to identify and address racial disparities and structural barriers, allowing unequal outcomes to persist without scrutiny. 

Invisibility in data, inequality in practice

The report highlights the importance of exploring lived experience of the digital immigration status through an intersectional lens. Race shapes how racialised migrants experience all aspects of the EUSS and the exercising of their rights. While the Home Office and decision-makers have no data to interrogate this intersecting identity, the report highlights this experience, well-understood and documented by the sector; 

As one participant explains it:

“If you’re a black EU citizen and you have relatives telling you about the horror stories with the Home Office, you’re even less likely to try. You’re even more anxious about it. So I saw that firsthand with my clients… I’m like, ‘you probably could have made this application yourself’, but they’re terrified and that’s why they need help.”

Ethnic minorities were more likely than their white counterparts to experience delays in the application process, technical issues, difficulties getting sufficient evidence, and were more likely to report issues when acquiring and using status. Indeed, the report highlights that some ethnic minority EU citizens who are resident in the UK and who are within scope of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) will not have status, meaning these barriers are putting the lives and rights of some EU ethnic minorities in the UK at risk.

Digital exclusion and racialised risk

The experience of navigating the ‘digital-only’ system to prove EUSS status and exercise rights, are exacerbated by these intersectional barriers of racism and marginalisation, limited English language and digital literacy skills, and a fear of engaging with public authorities. This renders people vulnerable when using their digital status in day to day activities, as well as more vulnerable to exploitation and control from others. 

As one participant in the report explains:

“I felt embarrassed because other passengers in the bus were waiting for me. I’ve never experienced that before, especially when I regularly travel from France to England by coach and go through immigration normally. Also, the fact that they put me aside and then me realising that the other passengers waiting for their passports to be returned were black like me raised questions.”

The report outlines the challenges of accessing and exercising rights experienced by the cohort taking part in the research. A concerning finding in the report was borne out by advisers highlighting how those with pre-settled status trying to access state support were further marginalised as the ‘right to reside’ test (opening up access to welfare benefits) was not always properly applied, or applied inconsistently. 

In general, ethnic minority communities’ continue to rely on accredited and free immigration advice to access and exercise their rights. This report points the particular need of free and accessible support for Roma and more marginalised African heritage communities due to their vulnerability, including low digital and English language skills, coupled with structural inequality.

As an adviser outlined in the report:

“[They say] ‘I lost my mobile I never had an email’ …. we contact the home office on their behalf …. And the officer on the line will say, ‘Okay, no worries. No problem at all, we need to go through the security questions’… [But] usually they can’t pass the security questions as someone else did the application on their behalf and this person again intentionally didn’t provide the details to them and didn’t inform them about the security questions because he wants them to keep coming back to him and to pay for this service. And when they can’t pass the security questions, then this is the beginning of a nightmare for them.”

The report underlines that demand for advice has not disappeared, even as government funding for free immigration advice has declined. For ethnic minority EU citizens, this gap in provision is not race-neutral. 

For Seraphus, the report reflects not only individual cases, but what becomes visible when legal expertise is embedded in communities through partnership working. The report’s findings reflect patterns we all see repeatedly at grassroots level through the advice work conducted and our insights gained from engaging with the sector as convenor of the Civil Society EUSS Alliance. The report confirms what many advisers and community groups have long observed: that ethnic minority EU citizens experience disproportionate barriers in navigating a digital immigration system due to their heightened risk of exclusion and precarity. These risks are shaped not only by immigration law, but socio-economic factors, by racism, digital exclusion, language barriers and insecure work. 

The findings of the report are also mirrored in our own casework. One of our current partnerships is with New Europeans, working in Leicester to embed legal knowledge through trusted community networks to support diverse communities. By enhancing legal advice and support we support racialised EU citizens and their families in the city navigate complex EUSS applications.  For individuals whose interaction with formal systems is shaped by previous experiences of discrimination and exclusion, community-based advice models are often the only effective route to securing and maintaining their rights. 

Our partnership with New Europeans demonstrates how local, community-based models can respond effectively by strengthening local capacity to support people facing multiple, intersecting barriers. Embedding legal knowledge within trusted community networks through up-skilling and training is therefore essential.

Beyond this local work, Seraphus convenes the Civil Society EUSS Alliance bringing together frontline advisers and organisations to share casework insight, emerging risks, and implementation challenges. This report has been shared with the Alliance as a source of data to help inform insights and advice provision across the UK. The collective approach we work to create in the Alliance helps identify patterns of racialised exclusion and channel evidence into policy engagement, sector learning and research like this report. Sustained collaboration ensures that knowledge is not fragmented or protected by gate-keepers. It strengthens frontline experience with systemic insight, ensuring access to justice is accessible to disadvantaged communities, and informs long-term policy and structural change.