How Media Affects Europeans’ Attitudes toward Refugees

How Media Affects Europeans’ Attitudes toward Refugees
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How Media Affects Europeans’ Attitudes toward Refugees
An international media-related topic and news event that interests me and relates to the research topic on how media affects Europeans’ attitudes toward refugees is the article, “Hostile environment has fostered racism and caused poverty, report finds” by Amelia Gentleman published in The Guardian on 3 September 2020. The article outlines the negative impacts of the hostile environment policy measures introduced by Theresa May when she was home secretary. The measures, which were initially aimed at increasing the numbers of immigrants choosing to leave the UK voluntarily, forced thousands of immigrants into poverty and barred them from receiving essential goods and services such as healthcare and housing (Gentleman, 2020). In addition, restrictions on access to essential social amenities forced people without immigration into poverty, including cramped and derelict accommodation, malnutrition, and poor mental health.
Background
The hostile environment policy measures resulted from extensive negative media coverage of undocumented immigrants in the UK, which forced then-home secretary, Theresa May, to institute harsher anti-immigration policies that denied those without proof of their right to be in the UK to employment and housing opportunities. The anti-immigration policies deprived people without an immigrant status of the opportunity to open bank accounts, acquire a driving license, or even access welfare and public services. These policy measures were designed to make life harder for undocumented immigrants and force them to leave the country voluntarily. The duty of identifying the unwanted elements was transferred to employers, frontline health workers, and landlords, who were required to conduct constant immigration checks (Gentleman, 2020). This shift of responsibility not only resulted in overworked staff working in under-resourced conditions but also prompted widespread racism against people from minority ethnic backgrounds.
Because of the anger over the shift of responsibility to flush undocumented immigrants, employers, landlords, and frontline healthcare staff resorted to new forms of racial profiling. An example of the negative impact of the racially discriminatory practices relates to the Windrush scandal, where thousands of legal UK residents were wrongly classified as illegal immigrants and denied the right to access healthcare and benefits, rent property, and work. These wrongly classified UK residents were mostly Commonwealth immigrants who arrived in the UK before 1971 and lived and worked in the UK for decades without official paperwork (BBC, 2018). Although Theresa May later apologized for treating the ‘Windrush’ generation, who had been granted permission to live and work in the UK immediately upon their arrival, the culture of negative media representations of immigrants resulted in discriminatory anti-immigration policies and practices that continue to persist in the UK.
Results and Discussion
The news event outlined in the article by Amelia Gentleman falls within the broader European media discourse on immigration and its effects. A literature review by Eberl et al. (2018) confirmed that people and media coverage in the UK generally held rather negative attitudes towards immigrants. These perceptions primarily increased after the election of a coalition government with conservative ideologies. UK news coverage mostly framed the issue of immigration within an economic context compared to other countries that focused on security or cultural aspects, mainly because of the government’s strong fixation on its fiscal responsibilities. The systematic literature review revealed that discourses on immigration and immigrants were quite diverse in the broader European context. Although migrant groups were generally underrepresented in media coverage, the few instances they featured in the news were often in economic, security, or cultural contexts and usually in a highly disapproving light.
Similarly, the visibility of migrant groups and immigration issues varied across countries, media genres, and time depending on the type of migrant group (whether culturally close or culturally remote) and type of immigration (whether legal or illegal). Moreover, real-world events were shown to frame dialogue on immigration in the short term, while long-term discourse was shaped by the political landscape (Eberl et al., 2018). Overall, media outlets’ format and political inclinations strongly shaped the direction of immigration media discourses in Europe. The literature review established that prominent issues on immigration and immigrants in media coverage ultimately swayed the political attitudes of viewers and readers, over and above party preferences. As the n...