Britain has always been less a project than a home. Belonging here has never depended on passing a test but on participating in a shared life — in its humour, its small courtesies, its sense of duty. The Labour government has now announced a new policy requiring migrants to meet a B2 (A-level equivalent) standard in English to work in Britain. The move has been presented as a step towards “integration”, a way to ensure newcomers can better “participate in British life”. But does higher English proficiency actually lead to integration, or is this another bureaucratic gesture designed to project control as Reform UK surges in the polls?

There is a persistent overemphasis on the linguistic aspect of integration among the political class, largely because it provides a tangible, measurable target. Yet integration is not primarily linguistic, but instead cultural and social. Of course, a decent command of English is necessary to function and communicate in society. But a migrant with GCSE-level English can already do this. What they need is proximity — daily contact with British life.

Real integration happens not through passing tests but through shared participation: in workplaces, churches, community groups, and common rituals. It takes root when people live alongside one another and contribute to the wider legacy of society. Many native-born Britons would struggle to pass a B2 English exam, yet they belong deeply within the culture. Integration, after all, is not about grammatical precision.

Labour’s focus on English proficiency also reflects a wider tendency in UK politics to conflate integration with immigration control. As Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood noted today, the Government’s failure to manage its borders has undermined public trust and framed migration as a problem to be contained rather than a community to be welcomed.

Yet by raising the English requirement, politicians signal that controlling numbers and improving linguistic skills are being conflated with fostering belonging. In reality, integration is not a matter of compliance or checkpoints; it is formed through participation in local life, shared rituals, and civic engagement. Treating it as a technical problem risks reducing social cohesion to a bureaucratic exercise. This might satisfy public anxieties, but it does little to create genuine connection.

The policy fits neatly within the broader ethos of Keir Starmer’s government: managerial, procedural, and obsessed with measurable performance. A recent example is the proposed extension of the qualifying period for settlement or citizenship from five to 10 years for most routes. The number of years is largely arbitrary; the real issue isn’t the length of time, but how that time is spent. One person may live in Britain for 12 years and remain detached from civic life, while another might, within five years, be attending their local church and volunteering at a museum or food bank.

What helps migrants truly integrate are the things that bind ordinary life together: local relationships, humour, shared idioms, participation in national moments such as Remembrance Sunday. Language follows community: it is absorbed through participation, not enforced through standards. The irony is that policies like this may end up attracting the credentialed global class — fluent in English but detached from the rhythms of everyday British life.

Britain’s integration problem is not about levels of English but social imagination. What is needed is a reframing: instead of setting bureaucratic thresholds, why not invest in civic renewal or in spaces where newcomers and locals can genuinely mix? This is not to deny the legitimate role of rules and enforcement in maintaining order, but policy cannot end there.

Belonging is not achieved by ticking boxes or filtering for the “best” migrants. Without the slow work of relationships and shared life, Britain risks fulfilling Starmer’s vision of an island of strangers: linguistically competent, perhaps, but socially adrift.

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Jide Ehizele writes on faith, culture, and belonging in modern Britain.

OBEhizele

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