About me
I have spent over 25 years working in immigration law as a barrister, writer and campaigner. I am currently on sabbatical from practice at Garden Court Chambers while undertaking a PhD in law at the University of Bristol.
My career began at two charities, the Immigration Advisory Service and the Refugee Legal Centre. I became a pupil then tenant at Renaissance Chambers before joining Garden Court Chambers in 2013, where I have practised across the full range of immigration and asylum law, including business immigration, family migration, nationality, EU free movement, refugees and asylum, and immigration detention.
I have given expert evidence to parliamentary committees, appeared many times in the national and international media and campaigned on issues including the rights of refugees, EU citizens and people affected by harsh family immigration rules.
Free Movement
I started Free Movement in March 2007 as an occasional blog written in the gaps between hearings. Nineteen years later it is a leading immigration law resource for legal professionals in the United Kingdom, with a team of staff, editors and contributors behind it. It is no longer a one man band.
The site is partly free to read and partly for members. Alongside daily commentary and analysis it hosts a huge number of online courses and we regularly run online webinars and workshops as well.
The website now has something like 8 million page views per year, over 4,000 members and 25,000 email subscribers.
Books
Refugee Law
Bristol University Press, 2022
A concise guide to international refugee law, structured around the Refugee Convention of 1951. It covers well founded fear, persecution, loss of refugee status, the rights of refugees and the responses of states, and looks ahead to the challenges posed by climate change.
Digestible, yet thorough. Colin Yeo has produced the perfect introduction to asylum law in the UK.
James C. Hathaway, University of Michigan
Buy from Bristol University Press or Amazon
Welcome to Britain
Biteback Publishing, 2020
Subtitled Fixing Our Broken Immigration System, this is for anyone who wants to understand how our immigration, asylum and citizenship system really works, and what really goes on inside it.
A brilliant and urgently necessary book.
Amelia Gentleman, journalist
Buy from Biteback, Amazon or Waterstones
Selected articles
A short selection of my academic writing rather than a full list. Everything else is on my Google Scholar profile.
- Melanie Griffiths and Colin Yeo, The UK’s hostile environment: deputising immigration control, Critical Social Policy 41(4) (2021) 521 to 544
- Repairing the United Kingdom’s asylum system, The Political Quarterly 95(2) (2024) 243 to 252
- The rise of modern banishment: deprivation and nullification of British citizenship, in Devyani Prabhat (ed), Citizenship in Times of Turmoil? (Edward Elgar, 2019) 134 to 150
- Agents of the State: when is an official of the State an agent of the State?, International Journal of Refugee Law 14(4) (2002) 509
In the media
I have been quoted in or written articles for a number of national newspapers and been interviewed on television and radio on many occasions. I do considerably less media work than I used to but I am still available for comment on immigration law and policy.
I have been quoted in front page stories on immigration law in The Times and The Telegraph, and also in The Economist, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. I have written for The Guardian and The Financial Times. On broadcast media I have been interviewed on the Today programme on Radio 4, BBC News, Newsnight, Channel 4 News and Sky News.
Selected coverage and appearances
- Inside Britain’s asylum system, London Review of Books podcast, December 2025
- More or Less: immigration statistics, BBC Radio 4, July 2023
- Could Donald Trump be banned from the UK?, BBC World News, January 2016
