Across the Global North, migration is often discussed through the language of threat, control, and enforcement.  

In the United States (US), we’ve seen highly visible operations led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resulting in the deaths of American citizens, family separations, and growing calls to abolish or reform the agency.  

In the United Kingdom (UK) the rise of Reform UK and the re-emergence of inflammatory migration rhetoric have brought renewed calls for tougher border controls. 

But this language obscures the human and psychological realities of movement across borders, and disregards the millions of migrants who legally live and work in the UK and US, and who face complex psychological pressures, including chronic fear, trauma, and long-term intergenerational harm to families and communities, which can be further aggravated by anti-migrant beliefs.   

The rhetoric also raises uncomfortable questions about contradiction and hypocrisy in settler-colonial states, like the US and UK, whose histories and present-day power emerged from colonial and imperial systems that drew borders through conquest and displaced Indigenous peoples.  

Framed against Britain’s imperial history and its role in producing global patterns of displacement and migration, such narratives obscure responsibility and accountability while reinforcing stereotypes that cast migration as a problem to be managed rather than a human experience to be understood.   

Our research engages with these contradictions, linking the intimate psychological experiences of migration to the longer histories of empire, border violence, and displacement that continue to shape contemporary migration politics. By highlighting lived experience, this research challenges stereotypes, and reminds us that migration is a deeply human experience situated in systems that are fundamentally dehumanising. This demands that policymakers and practitioners create sustained, meaningful opportunities for diverse migrant voices to inform the legislation and practices that govern their lives.  

When migrants are portrayed as a homogenous group, their diverse needs and experiences are erased and diminished. Migration is not just something that happens “out there” or to “other people”. It shapes workplaces, schools, families, neighbourhoods, and relationships, often in ways we do not immediately recognise. This is important not only at a personal and community level, but also at national and global level when policies, services and systems that should support the diverse needs of different migrant groups, most often hinder them.  

If we want to understand migration meaningfully, we must engage with lived experience as a central lens for research and practice. When we focus on migrants’ lived experiences, migration looks very different from the stereotypes and inflammatory narratives that dominate public debate. Referencing firsthand accounts from migrants can help us understand that migration involves both loss and opportunity, that belonging can be partial, fragile, or conditional, and that resilience is built not just internally, but through relationships, community, and recognition.   

In UK contexts, this means paying careful and sustained attention to how migration shapes the everyday lives of people within communities. This includes how they experience belonging, face exclusion and discrimination, navigate cultural expectations, and build resilience through social, familial, and communal networks, as well as how these dynamics interact with local institutions, social services, and wider societal attitudes.   

At a time when migration is increasingly politicised, psychology has a significant role to play in reframing public conversations. This is why our research into migration psychology, which we’ve compiled into an edited two-volume collection, centres diverse migrant voices, thus aiming to shed light on the complex realities of this often-misunderstood process of moving across borders.   

Dr Laura De Pretto is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology, and Saira Mirza is a PhD student at Leeds Trinity University.