The hidden harms of the NRM: How the UK’s anti-slavery system harms the children it claims to protect 

Guest post by Lucia Messent. Lucia holds an MSc in Public Policy and has worked on anti-trafficking advocacy and research with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. She currently serves as Policy Officer for Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine. Lucia is the winner of the 8th annual Border Criminologies Dissertation Prize. 

Image Credit: Hermes Rivera (CC)

The National Referral Mechanism (NRM) is the UK’s framework for identifying child ‘victims’ of modern slavery and human trafficking and helping them access support. Referrals to the framework trigger a formal decision-making process led by a Home Office body, which determines whether the individual is officially recognised as a victim. A positive decision can offer access to limited protections, including specialist support and, in some cases, additional entitlements in asylum and criminal justice procedures. This blog is based on research I conducted for my master’s dissertation, which explored children’s experiences of the NRM through interviews with local authority workers and Independent Child Trafficking Guardians who have supported children during the referral and identification process. Drawing on the research findings, I argue that the NRM intersects with immigration and criminal justice procedures in ways that reproduce broader social structures underpinned by race, class, and citizenship. Specifically, I explore the experiences of two groups: British children exploited in ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking operations and foreign national children referred in the context of immigration control. While their pathways into the NRM differ, both groups face comparable forms of harm, including hostile and discriminatory decision-making, prolonged precarity caused by administrative delays, and forced engagement with a process that is often experienced as another form of state surveillance.  

What are the problems with the NRM? 

The NRM has been widely criticised for its many failings, including lengthy delays – often lasting several years – and discriminatory decision-making, with foreign nationals found to be significantly more likely to receive negative decisions. Critics often focus on its administrative flaws, but a growing body of scholarship points to deeper structural problems, particularly its close association with repressive border regimes. Foreign nationals identified during asylum interviews and immigration raids are disproportionately likely to receive negative NRM decisions, with these outcomes then used to reject their asylum applications on credibility grounds. In this context, the NRM operates less as a protective tool, and more as a ‘selective border-making process’, extending the reach of the Home Office’s hostile environment. 

Previous scholarship largely focuses on adult NRM cases. This is a significant oversight, as children experience the system in distinct ways. Whereas adult referrals overwhelmingly involve foreign nationals, half of all child referrals are for UK nationals, the majority having been exploited in ‘county lines’ drugs trafficking operations, in which traffickers groom young people to act as drug runners or move cash on their behalf. These children are often from racially minoritised and socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. My research suggests they face comparable forms of exclusion – not through immigration enforcement, but through the NRM’s entanglement with racialised policing and criminal justice processes. Unlike adults, children cannot opt out of an NRM referral, making it even more urgent to question whether the system protects or harms them. 

Problematising the UK modern slavery agenda 

Under the leadership of then Home Secretary Theresa May, the UK positioned itself as a ‘world-leader’ in the modern anti-slavery movement. While officially presented as a humanitarian agenda, the UK modern slavery policy has consistently served anti-immigration objectives. Government discourse focuses on the international dimension of trafficking, presenting the typical victim as a vulnerable, undocumented migrant trafficked into the country via criminal networks. This construction legitimises increased border surveillance and restrictive immigration policies, while raids carried out in the name of ‘rescue’ routinely result in the detention and deportation of those identified as victims. 

In recent years, the policy has expanded into domestic policing through the reclassification of county lines as modern slavery. Though packaged as a safeguarding intervention, this framing is associated with increased profiling, monitoring and control of Black, working-class youth. Safeguarding procedures are frequently used to justify police-led intelligence gathering in affected communities, while the young people prosecuted as perpetrators are often from the same racially minoritised communities as the alleged victims. Rather than offering protection, this approach reinforces the criminalisation of the very communities it claims to safeguard. 

These trends reflect broader dynamics identified by critical criminologists, who show how dominant constructions of crime are used to justify additional policing and surveillance of racially minoritised and economically disadvantaged groups.  

The intertwining of NRM, asylum and criminal justice outcomes 

My findings indicate that NRM decisions are significantly intertwined with asylum and criminal justice outcomes, with inconsistent and harmful consequences for children. While a positive decision occasionally supports a child’s asylum claim or enables the use of the Section 45 defence (which protects individuals from prosecution for crimes committed during their exploitation), these effects are inconsistent and unpredictable. In contrast, negative decisions often leave children without protection in either the criminal justice or asylum system, and, in the latter, can actively undermine their applications for leave. Foreign nationals referred via immigration procedures and Black British boys referred for criminal exploitation are sometimes profiled as criminals abusing the system, leaving them at risk of being wrongly excluded from protection. These cases show how race, citizenship, class and gender intersect to determine which children are believed, and which are criminalised. 

Bureaucratic delay and the extension of harm 

Practitioners described the NRM as a source of profound stress and insecurity for children. Asylum and criminal justice procedures are often postponed while children await NRM outcomes. Excessive wait times, which sometimes last years, leave children in limbo with criminal charges or possible deportation hanging over their heads.  

For asylum-seekers, delays can mean extended periods in unsuitable temporary accommodation with insufficient financial and practical support. For those involved in criminal proceedings, delays extend their experience of police surveillance, restricted liberty, and chronic uncertainty. In this way, the NRM extends the gradual harms already inflicted on children through oppressive immigration and criminal justice frameworks. The resulting psychological and material insecurity can increase children’s vulnerability to re-trafficking. 

A coercive referrals process 

Finally, practitioners reported that children showed a widespread reluctance to engage with the NRM. Among foreign nationals, this was primarily due to justified fears that a negative decision could jeopardise their asylum case. British children involved in county lines cases often associated the NRM with law enforcement and rightfully feared that information shared through the process would be used to criminalise their peers.  

Many children also reject the label of victim or slave, which they feel fails to capture the constrained choices they had made in the context of social exclusion or border control. The fact that child referrals are mandatory further undermines the NRM’s credibility, raising important concerns around trust, consent, and the imposition of state narratives on children’s experiences. 

My research shows that the NRM is not a neutral safeguarding framework but rather an extension of wider systems of control and exclusion. Its delays, discriminatory logic and coercive design are symptoms of a broader structure that treats vulnerable children – especially those already marginalised by race, class or immigration status – as subjects to be managed, rather than protected. 

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