\n<\/p>\n
A pattern of \u201chostile language\u201d in news reports and UK parliamentary debates is more likely to describe people of colour as immigrants, or with less sympathy, researchers have found.<\/p>\n
The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust analysed more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019 and the general election in July 2024.<\/p>\n
Researchers concluded that the use of language about race and immigration by media and politicians has helped shape \u201cthe increase in reactionary politics and backlash against antiracism which has emboldened the far right in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report, A Hostile Environment: Language, Race, Surveillance and the Media is the second in a series. The first phase of the research analysed parliamentary and media reports from 2010 to 2014. It found that \u201cillegal\u201d was the most commonly linked word to migrants in parliamentary debates, which the researchers said reinforced the perception of migration as inherently unlawful.<\/p>\n
The latest report found that between 2019 and 2024 \u201cthe word \u2018illegal\u2019 has became an even stronger word association with the terms \u2018migrant\u2019 and \u2018immigrant\u2019 in both news and parliamentary debates than it was in the 2010\u201314 period\u201d, which, the authors claim, \u201cshows that the defining characteristic of migrants has been cemented as illegality over the past decade\u201d.<\/p>\n
The study claims that since 2014, \u201chostile environment\u201d immigration policies have worked to \u201cexpand and normalise the surveillance state\u201d through legislation, reporting measures and data sharing.<\/p>\n
When the researchers filtered \u201cwords associated with immigrants\u201d in news data by nationality, religion, ethnicity and geographical location, they found the word \u201cMexican\u201d was most strongly associated, \u201ctypically in the context of news reports about the USA\u201d.<\/p>\n
Referring to the second- and third-placed terms in that category, the report added that \u201cChinese\u201d and \u201cIndian\u201d were also very strongly associated with \u201cimmigrant(s)\u201d, usually when reporting about immigration \u201cin the UK context\u201d.<\/p>\n
The other most commonly used signifiers of identity associated with the word \u201cimmigrants\u201d in news were \u201cAsian\u201d, \u201cIrish\u201d, \u201cHaitian\u201d, \u201cMuslim\u201d, \u201cJewish\u201d, \u201cnon-white\u201d, \u201cVenezuelan\u201d, \u201cCuban\u201d and \u201cAfrican\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverwhelmingly, when the UK news media represents immigrants, the image that is invoked \u2026 is of an ethnically minoritised person,\u201d the report added.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, in Hansard data of parliamentary debates, the top 10 words most strongly associated with migration were \u201cillegal\u201d, \u201cnet\u201d, \u201ccommittee\u201d, \u201cact\u201d, \u201cbill\u201d, \u201ctackle\u201d, \u201clevel\u201d, \u201creduce\u201d, \u201csystem,\u201d and \u201cmass\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report said parliamentarians \u201care more likely to use humanising terms when talking about Ukrainians\u201d \u2013 such as \u201cguest\u201d, \u201cbrave\u201d, \u201ccommunity\u201d or \u201cdiaspora\u201d.<\/p>\n
The report claims: \u201cRacist discourse from the highest levels of UK society, including politicians and the media, is used to frame immigration as an existential threat to the British way of life \u2026 this works to justify ever more hostile immigration policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n The report added: \u201cOne stark example of the partnership between parliament and the news media in framing public perceptions of immigration in the UK can be found in connection with the \u2018stop the boats\u2019 political slogan.<\/p>\n \u201cThe explicit use of this slogan by rioters in the summer of 2024 on banners and in chants demonstrates that the hostile language we have identified in our analysis has emboldened sectors of the UK public to engage in racist violence.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout the 2019-24 period, news articles and political debates disseminating this kind of narrative come out in fairly close alignment with each other, both reaching their peak in 2023 and declining slightly into 2024, but with still very high levels of usage.\u201d<\/p>\n The Home Office has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the disorder of August 2024 \u2013 which followed the Southport attack \u2013 \u2018\u201chighlighted the need for a new approach to community cohesion\u201d and that a task force was developing a strategic national approach, while \u00a31.5bn was being invested in community services in 75 areas nationwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A pattern of \u201chostile language\u201d in news reports and UK parliamentary debates is more likely to describe people of colour as immigrants, or with less sympathy, researchers have found. The race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust analysed more than 63m words from 52,990 news articles and 317 House of Commons debates on immigration between 2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13643,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7321,2917,1723,2081,7319,150,124,7320],"class_list":{"0":"post-13642","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-antiracism","9":"tag-asylum","10":"tag-backlash","11":"tag-immigration","12":"tag-language","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-shaped"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13642"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13642\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}