Migration
As global volatility reshapes migration, our work advances just and sustainable solutions for people on the move.
For the Autonomy Institute, building better migration futures means developing more universal welfare systems, improved workers rights, and greater state transparency. It also requires understanding the reactionary forces that are shaping our world.
The Care Visa Sponsor Database: building transparency, challenging exploitation
The Care Visa Sponsor Database, developed by the Autonomy Institute, is a resource mapping UK social care providers licensed to sponsor workers’ visas.
While the government publishes a broad list of visa sponsors, it lacks sector-specific detail, making it harder for workers to find legitimate employers. To bridge this gap, we combined Home Office data with information from UK care regulators.
Originally developed with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in 2024, the database is now supported by UNISON. This tool supports migrant care workers by increasing transparency and helping to challenge exploitation in the sector.
Mapping the asylum-industrial complex
This series examines how the UK’s asylum system has been shaped by outsourcing, neglect, and profit-driven structures, through the asylum-industrial complex—where private contracts worth millions control essential humanitarian services, turning care into a financialised commodity.
Through collaboration with Migrants Organise, we bring first-hand testimony and visual representations of asylum’s carceral architecture to expose these dynamics.
From subcontracting networks to the crisis of care, the blog series uncovers how today’s asylum policies echo imperial histories of domination—raising urgent questions about who profits, who provides care, and whose rights are denied in the name of border control.
Mapping differential exposure during crisis
During Covid-19, we highlighted how migrant and BAME workers were disproportionately affected by exploitative labour conditions, particularly in essential sectors like healthcare and social care.
Autonomy’s Jobs at Risk Index (JARI) exposed the stark inequalities in the UK labour market, showing that those in the most at-risk and underpaid roles—predominantly women, migrants, and BAME workers—are also the most indispensable.
Analysing migration and the sex work economy
Our research has explored the intersection of migration, labour rights, and economic precarity within the sex work economy.
Sex Work 101 challenges misconceptions and highlights the realities faced by sex workers, many of whom are migrants navigating hostile immigration policies, criminalisation, and economic vulnerability.
By analysing the structural forces shaping the industry, this work exposes how policing, stigma, and precarious labour laws disproportionately impact migrant workers. We advocate for policy approaches that centre worker safety, autonomy, and labour rights—ensuring that all workers, regardless of immigration status, are protected from exploitation and harm.
Leicester, Boohoo and the new sweatshop: reprising a feminist lens for the UK Garment Industry
Representing a gig economy: gender, visibility, and news coverage of on-demand work during the pandemic
Care Visa Sponsor Database
Money for prostitutes is money for Black women: sex work, race and the English Collective of Prostitutes
The platformisation of sex work: affordances, challenges, precarities
Towards Fairtrade Certification and Worker-Owned Platforms: improving labour standards in the online sex industry
Precarious Futures Amid Global Crises
Cleaning up the Sector
Mapping the asylum-industrial complex
Digital platforms and care: researching for resistance
Repurpose, refuse: reflections on the platform care economy
Working Nights: municipal strategies for nocturnal workers
Sex work, automation and the post-work imaginary
Paternal care and the future of shared leave policy
Vaccine hesitancy amongst women of colour: media, race and representation
The strike at Imperial Typewriters
Reimagining the job centre: what the immigrant worker center can teach us about building power
Unpacking the COVID mortality data: what does it tell us about lockdown?
Low-paid workers, women and migrants will bear the brunt of this crisis
