Does Digital Status Unlawfully Penalise EU Citizens Accessing the UK's Private Rented Sector?

Abstract

In the past few years, more than six million EU citizens living in the UK have transitioned to a new immigration status. The only evidence they have of this new status is in digital form. This group is now navigating the UK's ‘compliant environment,’ designed to deter unauthorised migration, with this new form of status. This has created an unpredictable new dynamic with serious risks of discrimination in everyday interactions, such as when people are trying to rent a property. In this article, we explore the impact of this digital‐only status by drawing on a large‐scale discrete choice experiment with private rented sector landlords, which shows that people with digital‐only immigration status are substantially penalised on the private rental market due to the form of their ID. We argue that this discrimination is not only troubling in substance but also arguably amounts to a breach of non‐discrimination and equal treatment provisions under the Withdrawal Agreement (Article 12 and Article 23 respectively). The apparent lack of effective enforcement points to the potential limits of such protections after Brexit.