FT Professional Glossary
Catch-22
An unpleasant situation from which there is no escape because you need to do one thing before doing a second, but you cannot do the second thing before doing the first
Example usage from an FT article:
Those fleeing conflict confronted a near perfect Catch-22: if they came to the UK via “irregular” routes they would be deemed “illegal”, but they overwhelmingly only had access to “irregular” routes.
Excerpt from "Protections afforded to refugees benefit us all"
