How the British Media Is Narrowing the Immigration Debate

This post originally appeared on VICE UK

The immigration debate is getting pretty loud. One way or another, it's harder than ever to ​ignore the UKIP—with their ​breast-shunning and ​their calypso and the fact that they've got Big Alan Titchmarsh on board—and, despite their tiny two MP presence in Parliament, the purple-and-yellow party seem to be steering a debate that's getting louder and louder as we creep closer to an election. And that debate simply boils down to this: "Yo, what should we do about people coming into the UK? Should we let them? Should we let them claim benefits when they get here? Do we let them seek medical treatment when they are ill or hurt? What the fuck do we do about other humans?"

But the immigration chat isn't just getting louder—it's also getting narrower. Back in the good old days of 2006, left-leaning newspapers such as the Guardian and Independent at least made a fist of presenting immigration as a human issue, scattering Comment Is Free with headlines that basically went: "Hey, guys? Immigrants are humans, too. Let's not be dicks about it."

Fast forward to 2014 and that human argument has gone by the wayside, with the main gist of the pro-immigration argument being, "Well, they're pretty good for the economy, I guess? Let them in, maybe?" With the Mail still chundering on about immigrants coming into the country and ruining school nativities and making kosher a thing and shooting the St George's flag with high-powered rifles or whatever, the left-leaning press has quietly turned immigrants from actual humans into economic units.

With each political party seemingly drawing their respective line in the immigration sand in recent weeks, I reached out to Dr. Alex Balch, International Relations expert at the University of Liverpool's politics department. His latest research looks at the changing way immigration has been reported in the British media over the past eight years. He and his colleague Ekaterina Balabanova went through over 500 articles from various British tabloids and broadsheets between 2006 and 2013, and found that the immigration debate was narrowing—the human side was being cited less and less, basically—more right-leaning and more dehumanizing: the word "flood" cropped up a lot.

I spoke to Dr. Balch about the changing public opinion on immigration and how it's shaped and reflected by the press, as well as the influence it might have on next year's general election.

VICE: So give me a brief overview of your latest research. What was the reasoning behind it?
Dr. Alex Balch:​ It really starts from a point that a lot of people agree on: that the media isn't doing a great job on immigration. It's a problematic issue. We often hear people saying the Daily Mail is terrible on immigration—that there are lots of inaccuracies and stereotyping. But it's no longer just a tabloid thing; it's part of the culture of the press here.

And to prove how not good it is, you analyzed over 500 articles from 2006 to 2013—what is it you were looking for?
​ What we wanted to do with our research was test that out and go a bit beyond the surface level—go beyond what nasty words were used in relation to immigrants and look at what sort of arguments are out there in the press. What is underlying these vicious statements and words? Because, in the end, although it's worrying if the stereotypes are used, we were more interested in asking: "What are the fundamental arguments being put forward?" Because it feels like the debate has narrowed and it's become almost a panic. It seems to be spiraling and getting worse and worse.

The main thing I noticed in your research is that you found the human representation of immigration had fallen out of fashion. Where did it go?
​ It's vanished, basically. What we found was that, in 2006, there was a little bit of that going on. There was a little bit in the left wing broadsheets of a human rights angle—a more cosmopolitan notion—that immigration isn't all about money; that it's not about "how much they cost" or "how much we get from them"; that there are other things going on. But it was marginal in 2006, and what we've found is that it has gone from being marginal to being absent. So it's gone from being unbalanced to being skewed or completely lopsided.

In 2006, the Independent did a campaign against the Daily Mail, saying, basically, "Look at all these horrible tabloids doing these horrible things." It really put up a bit of a fight. In 2013, they sort of gave in. They let the right wing press have its way. They've really withdrawn from that debate.

What arguments have specifically gone by the wayside in recent years?
We looked at the political arguments about immigration and initially found around five arguments for a reduction in immigration—economic arguments, arguments from the basis of social justice, public security and identity, as well as more democratic arguments—but now it's more like three.

Interestingly, the identity-based arguments, which are the most similar to racism—you know, "We shouldn't allow these people because they're different to us"—weren't something we found, particularly. So there's this idea that, in terms of the stereotypes and language used by those who oppose immigration, that everything's about racism. But when it comes to the underlying arguments, people don't use racist arguments to justify immigration control.

So what are people's concerns?
​ People's main concerns are the public security arguments—the idea that immigrants bring problems, the worst one being disease, or that they bring petty crime. That was something that was introduced into the debate in 2006, when the government leaked an informal report suggesting that 40,000 criminals were going to come from Bulgaria and Romania. It was a report that we never actually saw, but it was leaked. Public security arguments—this idea that immigrants are bringing insecurity, danger—became more common after that.

The other obvious one was welfare chauvinism: the idea that immigrants are going to come and take our public goods, an argument that often breaks down to "things that we deserve" and "things they don't deserve." That chimes with welfare chauvinism more broadly across society—the old argument of who deserves benefits and who does not—an issue that, equally, has come to the fore more recently. So you can see it fits with the general shift in public debate.

It's interesting that you can pinpoint key moments when the debate changed. Was the financial collapse in 2008 something that spurred the welfare chauvinism side of things?
​There's definitely a link there. The more troubled times we have, the more we look at who to blame—and also who to exclude. In 2006, where our research started, there were more arguments saying, "Immigration is mainly making us money, so it's a good thing." I think most economists agreed—and still agree—that, during a recession, immigration is, on balance, going to benefit the country. What we've seen in the later period is less willingness to make that argument.

It's about sensitivity to public opinion. Newspapers obviously want to say things that their readers want to hear, and I don't think the public are now as happy to say, "OK, well it's good for all of us, so I'm happy. I'll go along with that because the country as a whole is better off." While the arguments at the national level still hold that immigration is a positive, people are much more focused on the local level.

Was public opinion something you tracked? Did you see it change in any way?
​The public opinion is very steadily going toward being against more immigration. But it's often about perspective: when people are asked if they favor large-scale immigration, there's a very high percentage that say no. But if they're asked, "If an immigrant has worked and contributed taxes for 10 years, should they be allowed to bring their partner into the country and access the health system?" then everyone says yes. So if you talk on the macro level it's very easy for people to say they're anti-immigration, but when you bring it down to local communities—the people who run the local shop, the family down the road—the opinions change. So public opinion surveys are maybe measuring one thing, but not the whole picture.

There's a general election coming up, and the immigration debate looks like it's going to be a big factor
​It's going to be massive, isn't it?

Every political party seems to be coming out with a tough line on immigration, and obviously UKIP have two MPs now and are loudly on the rise. How do you think UKIP and the immigration debate might shape next year's election?
​Even if UKIP don't get that many seats—we're insulated a bit through our first past post system—they don't need to win that many seats to have an impact. I'm interested in where this is going to end in terms of how far it will go. There's an arms race here on how strict we can be on immigration and how much we can count people going people in and out and how much we can interfere in the life of the individual.

Landlords in Birmingham now have to check immigration status. At the university we now have to check immigration status. The same thing will happen with the NHS. I can see the arguments for that and I'm not going to just completely discount them, but they are probably a bit misguided and over the top. The question is: How far can we go?

There was one moment with Mark Reckless in the Rochester by-election recently where he just made a little slip and ​said something about deporting the immigrants who are already here—potentially asking them to leave the country after they have legally entered. You can tell that a shiver went down everyone in the audience's back. Even those who are quite worried about immigration wouldn't accept the idea of literally rounding people up and putting them on planes.

I'm interested in how far this arms race will go before someone flinches and says, "Hold on, we're actually being ridiculously security focused here." It's also a question of which party can benefit from the UKIP backlash, which I'm still waiting for. I thought it would come sooner. I thought that as soon as UKIP got any sort of scrutiny that they would implode, but they've been remarkably resilient.

When do you expect it, then?
​The implosion is probably round the corner, and I think it will come because people will feel how unjust something is. The idea of deporting your neighbor is key—there have been lots of local campaigns against deportation, and a lot of people now have mixed nationality families.

The government has to be careful because when it starts saying something about immigrants, it's actually threatening a large number of families. We've seen that in America where there have been loads of families split up because of their deportation policy. Children getting left behind and families getting broken up—that's really powerful politically. Causing that human damage, that's the limit of how far we can go. The question is when we can get there, and I hope it's soon because we've spent far too long traveling down that particular road.

The idea of dealing with the illegal immigrants and then moving on to the legal immigrants and the hidden immigrants and the children sounds a lot like the BNP, with their talk of going back generation by generation and purifying society. That's when it's going to start getting really scary—that's the point where the public will become revolted by the whole thing. I wonder if, in this general election, there might be a little bit of that happening and, maybe I'm being optimistic, but UKIP finding its message doesn't have quite the impact it thinks.

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