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Housed in a detention centre in southern England, Aladeen says he risked his life to travel thousands of miles from his homeland of Syria to escape being forced to fight in the military of President Bashar al-Assad.

Now the 21-year-old is battling to stay in Britain and avoid being sent across the world again, this time to Rwanda where the British government wants to send migrants who turn up illegally on its shores.

"It's the end of the world for me, I can't imagine it," he told Reuters by phone through an interpreter and declining to give his full name while his asylum claim is considered.

Aladeen, one of about 130 migrants initially given a ticket to Rwanda and now left in legal limbo, is caught in the British government's struggle to control its borders and manage voters' post-Brexit migration demands.

He is among more than 20,000 migrants to have made the precarious 20-mile journey from France to Britain this year on small boats across the English Channel, crossing one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world.