Controlled Openness: Conditional Belonging and the Limits of Tolerance in Labour’s 2024-2025 Migration Discourse

This article analyses Labour’s migration discourse during its first period in government after the 2024 UK general election. Drawing on concept-oriented Critical Discourse Analysis, it examines Labour’s 2024 manifesto, prime ministerial and ministerial speeches, parliamentary statements and the 2025 White Paper Restoring Control over the Immigration System. The article argues that Labour’s discourse is neither a rupture with recent Conservative and post-Brexit migration discourse nor its straightforward continuation. Labour rejects symbolic Conservative policies such as Rwanda and presents migration governance through competence, repair and responsible government. Yet it recontextualises longer British discourses of control, cohesion and conditional belonging through fairness and national repair. Britain is constructed as open, tolerant and generous, while settlement, citizenship and belonging are made conditional upon contribution, English, integration, lawful conduct and civic responsibility. The article shows how restrictive migration governance is re-legitimated through liberal vocabularies while making openness conditional upon state discipline, exclusion and removal.