Sci-Fi About Borders and Migration: 4 Stories About Who Gets Let In
Four films, series and novels in our archive about refugees, walls and water rights, ranked by score, with what each one got right about how a frightened country behaves.
The best sci-fi about borders and migration we've reviewed is Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón's film of a Britain that stops having babies and turns on its refugees. Then comes Years and Years, Russell T Davies's family saga of the 2020s, followed by Sleep Dealer, a film about a border that lets labour through and keeps bodies out, and The Water Knife, a novel about states fighting over a river.
Four works is a short list, and we'd rather give you four we've reviewed than pad it. The four are united by the same finding in our ledgers: none of them got the cause right, and most of them got the politics right. Children of Men is wrong about the babies and right about Britain. The Water Knife is wrong about the guns and right about the paperwork. The fear of who gets in, and the machinery built to manage it, arrived on schedule, and writers who had a clear picture of how a country behaves under that fear did better than those who relied on a clever mechanism.
Each pick links to its full review and its ledger. For futures nearer to hand, see sci-fi set in the 2020s and 2030s.
Set in 2027, in a Britain where no child has been born for eighteen years, and where asylum seekers are hunted and kept in camps. As a forecast of fertility it's wrong, and was never trying to be right, but South Korea's rate fell to 0.72 in 2023. The border is the hit. Parliament passed the Illegal Migration Act 2023, the government tried to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda until the Supreme Court ruled the plan unlawful, and from August 2023 asylum seekers were housed on a barge in Portland harbour. Our highest score, 9.2.
A Manchester family lives through the 2020s as one disaster follows the next. Daniel's partner Viktor is a gay Ukrainian refugee who is deported, and Daniel drowns in the Channel following him. The show put a Russian-backed takeover of Ukraine and its refugees in a 2019 family drama. In 2022 Russia invaded in full, and millions of Ukrainians fled west, many to Britain under special visa schemes. Kyiv didn't fall, so the details differ. The speeches are overwritten, but the fourth episode is the hardest thing in the series.
Alex Rivera's 2008 film imagines a sealed US border that still lets work through: Mexican workers plug into nodes and operate robots across the line. The film also shows water as a private commodity, and in late 2026 the US government is still fighting in court to keep building wall through West Texas. The cables are fiction. The remote labour is arriving, with human agents already guiding robotaxis. Stiffly acted, with the right idea: the cheapest border is the one you never have to open.
In Paolo Bacigalupi's Southwest, Arizona has lost the Colorado and Nevada has kept it, and the people on the fringe are cut off first. That part came true. Arizona lost 512,000 acre-feet in the first Level 1 shortage, and Scottsdale cut off hauled water to about 500 homes in Rio Verde Foothills. No state has closed its border to another, and Phoenix keeps growing. It's better as prophecy than as a novel, and our lowest score here, 5.9. The war turned out to be fought by lawyers.
What is the best sci-fi about immigration and refugees?
Children of Men is the strongest in our archive, with a 9.2 score and the Nearness reading ARRIVING. Its picture of a frightened country that keeps asylum seekers in camps and moves them offshore has proved uncomfortably close to real policy. It is set in 2027, which is next year.
Did Children of Men come true?
Partly. The infertility didn't, and the film never explained it. But falling birth rates are a national emergency in South Korea, and the camps, barges and offshore schemes for asylum seekers have become ordinary British politics. See the P(n) Board.
Is there sci-fi about climate migration?
In our archive, The Water Knife is the closest, about the Colorado River shortage and the people left dry, and Sleep Dealer is about water and labour at the border. We haven't yet reviewed a novel that is mostly about climate refugees, and we'll add one when we have.
Which is more accurate, Years and Years or Children of Men?
Both got the politics right and the details wrong. Years and Years was nearer to the calendar, with a second Trump term, Ukrainian refugees and an American bank collapse. Children of Men looks further ahead, so it is still arriving.