Recently, I have been part of conversations where people have discussed ways to appeal to Priti Patel’s or the Home Office’s sense of compassion or humanity. I’ve listened as those with lived experience, practioners, and researchers expressed frustrating at a lack of understanding from the UK government that the New Borders Bill will cause harm and not help. I have found myself thinking that these sentiments seem to stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of UK policy; the intention is to harm, not help and is to create suspicion and destroy sympathy for those seeking asylum.
For some, there seems to be a belief that Home Office plans are so cruel only because there’s a lack of understanding of the trauma and hardship asylum seekers and refugees face and of the desperation that leads people to risk their loves in dinghies. And that is where I believe there is a fundamental misunderstanding. I strongly believe Priti Patel does understand (at least to some extent), she just does not care. In fact, I would say the Home Office, under Patel and her immediate predecessors, have waged a deliberate campaign, using the media to turn British sympathy and compassion into suspicion in order to legitimise an Act of cruelty. Such policy is not new nor unique to the UK (Kelly 2012; Panti and Ojala 2019; Molnar 2016)but I wanted to discuss it specifically here.
In late 2015 and 2016 a wave of compassion swept across the nation when the images of Alan Kurdi were shared. Language shifted, with an increase in the use of the term “refugee” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37257869). New community and fundraising groups were formed across the U.K., such as the Hay Brecon and Talgarth group, AberAid, and Bloom (Mumbles, Swansea). Research showed that the image of the drowned Alan on a beach motivating and galvanising people into action (Guma et al, 2019) Much of the British public, as in other Global North nations, responded to the 2015-16 refugee “crisis” with tangible compassion and sympathy.
The Home Office have spent the years since, turning sympathy and compassion into suspicion and cruelty. Reviews a year after Alan Kurdi drowned showed that no policies had changed to help those making perilous journeys to find/have safe routes to asylum. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-37257869). Much of the media stuck with or reverted to the phrase ‘migrant crisis’, with articles more focused on numbers and statistics than human stories while downplaying the issues in Syria which lead to the high numbers of refugees fleeing there (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-34131911). While ‘human interest’ media stories remained, there was a noticeable move away from human compassion.
Since 2015 refugees have continued to arrive in the U.K. via channel boats. It is true that numbers of refugees arriving on British shores via boats on the Channel have increased, so the horror and compassion felt over Alan Kurdi did not turn to solutions and creating safe routes. However, those using dinghies to reach U.K. still only represent a small proportion of those who seek to enter the country each day/month/year. It’s not the mode of entry to the U.K. for the majority of asylum seekers. Yet, “migrants” on channel boats have come under increasing focus and scrutiny by the media and in Home Office rhetoric and policy in ways that utterly lack compassion and encourage the public to view arrivals with suspicion.
In my opinion, the cruelty of the New Borders Bill do not stem from a lack of understanding but from a wilful, ideological choice to dehumanise and be cruel. Dehumanising asylum seekers and refugees is nothing new. Using language of invasion and swarming is not novel either, with David Cameron using such language during the 2015 ‘crisis’ (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/30/david-cameron-migrant-swarm-language-condemned). Such tactics have been used since at least the 1990s to justify increasingly harsh and hostile asylum policies and legislation, following similar language used towards voluntary migrants in the preceding decades (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/15/how-immigration-became-britains-most-toxic-political-issue). New Labour embedded the fallacy of pull factors in the British psyche and built on the notion of bogus asylum seekers to justify stripping those claiming asylum of basic human rights with the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act. In the 2010s Coalition and Tory policy deliberately created a hostile environment, with Prime Minsters making speeches that fed a perception of asylum seekers as ‘other’ who are potentially dangerous (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/10/immigration-bill-theresa-may-hostile-environment). There had been a constant feeding of a false narrative that there was “swarms” of voluntary, economic migrants falsely claiming to be asylum seekers just to live on £35-39.60 a week.
However, that image of Alan Kurdi gave a very human image of asylum seekers. An image of a child who died trying to get to safety undermined the dehumanisation of asylum seekers. For a while, the outpouring of compassion from sections of British society may have been useful for policy makers and politicians. People volunteered their time for ESOL classes, collecting and distributing donations, and more for Syrian Refugees. (Guma et al, 2019.) This potentially saved the public purse some expenditure. However, the idea that we should be compassionate to those who risk their lives and flee for safety to find sanctuary in the U.K. was and is at odds with long term Home Office policy.
So, that new found compassion needed to end. In the past few years, there has been a systematic attempt to dehumanise those who make journeys like the Kurdi family did. There has been a systematic painting of asylum seekers crossing the Channel from France as chancers, scroungers, fakers, cheats, and illegal. In online forums where there was outpouring of horror and compassion over Alan Kurdi, I have recently found sentiments of disgust at the recent 27 deaths in the channel. Media outlets that published syampthetic stories on Alan Kurdi wrote about 27 deaths in terms of ‘more boats’ and the arrests of people involved (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-59412329). Such articles create a perception of those seeking refuge as criminals who must be stopped, not fellow humans deserving compassion and support. The fact some of those who drowned were children, is discussed one social media with sentiments such as “their parents should have thought about that and stayed in France”. The constant drip feed of rhetoric about ‘swarms’ of ‘bogus’ asylum seekers and illegal channel crossings have had a purpose.
It seems that in parts of British society that goal has been successful. Where 5 years ago public discourse was full of compassion about drowned children, today there is much disdain and disgust. Politicians now make false statements about the law, feeding much repeated mistruths and lies (https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2021/12/13/women-asylum-seekers-to-counter-the-widespread-lies-about-people-fleeing-for-safety/). The Home Office has successfully tabled and passed (in the H of C) what has been described as the most racist legislation of a generation (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/protest-nationality-borders-bill-b1978675.html). Much of the media seem to be in full support of demonising people crossing the Channel in dinghies. It seems a proportion of the British public is too (although a big proportion is not, judging from the outpouring of support for the RNLI). The Home Office, however, does not need full British support for the New Deal, it simply needs enough support. It has worked hard to get that. The belief that the Home Office just needs to understand more and see more and it will change its approach is, at best, naive. The cruelty towards asylum seekers is calculated, and deliberate, and based on a combination of sufficient knowledge and a belief cruelty is acceptable policy.
References
Guma, T., Woods, M., Yarker, S. and Anderson, J., 2019. ” It’s that kind of place here”: solidarity, place-making and civil society response to the 2015 refugee crisis in Wales, UK. Social Inclusion, 7(2), pp.96-105.
Kelly, T., 2012. Sympathy and suspicion: torture, asylum, and humanity. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18(4), pp.753-768.
Pantti, M. and Ojala, M., 2019. Caught between sympathy and suspicion: journalistic perceptions and practices of telling asylum seekers’ personal stories. Media, Culture & Society, 41(8), pp.1031-1047.
Molnar, P., 2016. The boy on the beach: The fragility of Canada’s discourses on the Syrian refugee” crisis. Contention, 4(1-2), pp.67-76.
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