Rationale, data and methods

The online database Lexis-Nexis was used to collect newspaper articles on issues of (im)migration, asylum and refugees in four specific moments with the aim of discovering the narratives emerging in the national public debate. The database could be searched for articles containing specific search words, during specific time periods and in specific newspapers. The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail were selected on the basis of their circulation, political leaning, and readership. According to a recent survey (YouGov 2017) on public perceptions of where British mainstream national newspapers sit on the left-right political spectrum, Britain’s most widely read newspaper, the Daily Mail, is seen as the most right-wing newspaper, while The Guardian, lying at the other end of the spectrum, is regarded as Britain’s most left-wing newspaper. The Telegraph is considered to be right of centre or fairly right-wing, while The Independent is seen as broadly centrist, but slightly left-leaning. The four key moments selected for observation were the European Parliament elections (May 2014), the EU-Turkey Statement or ‘deal’ (March 2016), the ‘Brexit’ referendum on the withdrawal of the UK from the EU (June 2016), and an ‘eventless’ week (January 2017) to ascertain ‘background noise’ related to migration in the public debate.

The articles were then manually selected, based on shared sampling criteria. Letters to the editors, interviews, transcripts of speeches were excluded, as were duplicates produced by the database due to multiple editions of the newspapers. For the eventless week, articles dealing with (im)migration issues outside Europe, such as on the US-Mexican border or in Australia, were also excluded. The final UK dataset contained 485 articles. Table 2 provides a summary of the main search criteria as well as the total number of articles collected for each newspaper for the four key moments.

The next step in the analysis involved a close reading of all selected articles in order to identify dominant and counter narratives. Excerpts were thus manually coded according to shared guidelines, pinpointing narratives that framed each issue, the sources or claimants, and the referents of justice typically reported by journalists. The aim was to facilitate analysis of the embedded justice claims.

The EU matters

The mutual relationship between the debate on (im)migration and the equally heated one on UK membership in the EU is extremely intricate, with issues of (im)migration from within and outside the EU, asylum and freedom of movement, national and EU levels of governance frequently – and in a more or less unwarranted way – overlapping, as well as being conflated and mutually inferred.

The ‘EU matters’ narrative provides a powerful focus and structure to this cluttered interrelationship by construing the UK-EU connection as the determining factor in upholding or thwarting the country’s aspiration to regain full control over its immigration policy, as well as maintaining or undermining the country’s socio-economic and international stability, which is assumed to depend to a great extent on (im)migration. In turn, (im)migration is presented as a factor generating a genuine crisis in the UK-EU relationship; that is, a unique historical situation in which every possible outcome, from collapse to regeneration, is equally plausible (Goodwin and Milazzo 2017, 451). Even the narratives deliberately employed by politicians are heavily affected by the relevance of EU-related discourses, as the case of Ed Miliband’s 2014 campaign shows:

This narrative interweaves multiple aspects impacting on UK migration policy, such as the EU’s international initiatives in this area, the Single Market, the status of EU citizens in the UK and vice versa, as well as more general commentaries about the integration process as such, in order to understand and respond to the phenomenon, by either supporting, ignoring or opposing the EU. In the four periods under scrutiny, with a slightly higher concentration in the first two, when the relation was still relatively less obvious, a substantial number of articles contain narratives that make sense of (im)migration through the EU-UK relationship. These narratives are more about ‘the politics of immigration’ than immigration itself; in other words, they constantly recount the link between the two political cleavages at the national and the European level, striving for a simplification that is however only achieved superficially (Balch and Balabanova 2017).

The vibrant, and somewhat convoluted, trans-party debate about whether a binary choice needs to be made between the goals of curbing immigration and having privileged access to the Common Market, is a good example of the pivotal position of the EU in narratives:

The threatened island nation

The notions of ‘insularity’ and ‘island mentality’ have frequently been used to refer to Britain’s sense of superiority and exceptionalism, its ‘emotional’ detachment from continental Europe, and a general lack of knowledge and interest in all that lies outside its immediate experience (Garton Ash 2011). Lately, a more literal meaning of ‘being an island’ has also been gaining ground; ever since (im)migration has become an increasingly central theme in the national debate, the drawbacks and benefits of being a country isolated from other land masses have been incorporated into an array of relevant narratives.

Most of them hinge on Britain’s vulnerability, presented as the result of the country’s internal equilibrium being damaged much more easily by external factors, at least compared to non-island nations, whose history of mobile boundaries and continued interactions with neighbouring nations have made them relatively resilient to transborder pressures like population movements. In the threatened island narrative, excessive immigration – in fact, virtually any considerable amount thereof – impinges upon Britain’s demographic and cultural make-up, jeopardising its very foundations as a state, both material and ideational. The response to this existential threat consists in re-equipping the country with effective means of protection – hence ‘border control’ and ‘security’ narratives – which is premised on the country’s independence from any external or higher-ranking authorities. The question is explicitly articulated as a matter of sovereignty only in a comparatively limited number of articles (more frequently in left-leaning newspapers, in particular with a cautionary purpose). This narrative overlaps, but also clashes, with the socio-economic one, as the problem of the constraints imposed by the EU and international regimes is frequently treated as a question of empirical control, that is, of borders, taxes and revenues, law-making and regulations, rather than of supreme authority. This “operational notion”, as Gamble (2003, 23) calls it, is consistent with the conceptual history of sovereignty in the UK in which the ultimate form of sovereignty seems to have an internal orientation, traditionally equated with parliamentary sovereignty. It is not by chance that The Guardian refers to “abstractions […] of sovereignty”:

In this perspective, tales of sovereignty may be regarded as attempts by social forces and political parties to advance their agendas, as well as the more structural processes of securitisation of migration and asylum (Diez and Squire 2008). In fact, while the perspective of existential annihilation looms large in many narratives, it is the ‘middle-range’ threat posed by the lack of control over (im)migration to the government’s effectiveness and democratic legitimacy that is perceived as the more urgent concern in the public debate. In most accounts of ‘uncontrolled’ immigration, the EU and, in particular, the freedom of movement of European labour within the Single Market, as well as the rights deriving from EU citizenship, are singled out as the main causes of this predicament. This is confirmed by the concentration of this sub-narrative in both the EP elections and the Brexit referendum periods. In fact, the narrative of impending danger usually includes a semantic motif of imminent resurgence, enshrined in the ‘take back control’ slogan, popularised during the Brexit campaign. Indeed, once safe from the EU’s reckless experiments in post-national policymaking and institution-building, British authorities (not only the legislative and the executive, but also the judiciary) will once again have full control over all the means needed to secure national borders and the autonomy of the country.

The adoption in 2010 of the net migration target as the centrepiece of the country’s immigration policy is nested in a policy narrative of Britain as a nation that, owing to objective geographical circumstances, can only afford to host a certain number of people at any given time. This sub-narrative inescapably calls for a rigid immigration policy for fear of a demographic, economic and cultural collapse of the country, in spite of the government’s and the British people’s best intentions to harbour people escaping from persecution (see Tuckett 2017).

(Im)migration as a socio-economic issue

A number of narratives construe (im)migration in rather prosaic terms, stressing aspects that act as a so-called pull factor, the ordinary policy machinery necessary to administer the flows, and the impact of human movements on the resources (welfare and services) of the receiving country. Accordingly, the responses entailed in such narratives are characterised by a sensible and realistic approach, as well as a modus operandi based on practical rather than theoretical considerations, which may be traced back to the pragmatic approach to policy matters generally regarded as a distinctive attribute of British politics, if not a feature of national identity as a whole (Kelly 2003, 243; Kenny 1999).

Especially in the period of the 2016 referendum, migration-related narratives tended to focus on down-to-earth aspects concerning ‘regular people’. On the one hand, the Remain camp and, in general, articles in left-leaning newspapers tended to be based on the opinion of the ‘overwhelming majority of economists’:

Likewise, most international organisations warned against the negative economic consequences of leaving, also due to the prospective shortage of European labour and a diminished appeal of the country for high-end immigrants. On the other hand, short of plain economic chauvinism, the Leavers’ narrative was that a short-term economic downturn would be a price worth paying for the potential economic gain in the long run, as the return of full control over borders to the British government would bring more opportunities for British workers and more effective welfare services, apart from freedom from the Union’s red tape and self-defeating regulations.

An eminently pragmatic approach appears to inform the narrative of Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, in which any consideration of EU membership and all that it entails in terms of free movement, immigration and asylum policies, should not derive from a commitment to the integration project, but be contingent on its compatibility with the protection of British workers’ rights and wage levels.

In the socio-economic narratives, ‘low politics’ themes appear to be combined (if not conflated) regularly with others focused more on security issues or empirical questions of self-(national) government. Arguably, what makes the thematic boundaries between narratives even more indistinct is the use of the flexible concept of ‘control’ by the Leave campaigners. On the one hand, control may refer merely to the government’s need to gain a firmer grasp of the demographic variable, based on the assumption that this is the only reasonable way to ensure an effective and ultimately just governance of the national economy. On the other hand, control also evokes concerns that “rankle at a much more fundamental level than the fear of immigration and the obsession with sovereignty” (Freeden 2016, 5). In fact, the emphasis on economic aspects does not necessarily imply the pre-eminence of a utilitarian rationale over an ideational one. This can be seen in discourses on Britain’s national pride and independence by Daily Mail commentators and one-nation conservatives, with their yearning for the country’s glorious past as a global trade power.

(Im)migration as a question of humanity

The public debate in Britain does not lack narratives that view immigration in terms of human rights and, to a lesser extent, the actual subjectivities of those who leave their place of origin due to persecution, fear, dire circumstances or just in search of an improvement in their lives. We draw here on the concept of ‘humanity’ to include narratives hinging not only on respect and promotion of (or opposition to) universal human rights, but also all other instances of protection and care towards migrants of any kind. With the onset of the migration crisis, several humanity narratives emerged in which the EU and other governments, especially those of Greece and other Balkan countries failed to protect migrants from the dangers and difficulties of their journey towards Europe.

Depictions of a guilty EU, inactive in the face of the tragic deaths of people trying to reach southern European shores, are strikingly different from those to be found, in much greater number, in the three weeks around the conclusion of the EU-Turkey Statement. In this period, British and foreign politicians and decision-makers, NGOs and journalists concur with a story of the EU’s all-too-active willingness to strike a deal with a regime that is at best erratic in its commitment to improving its poor human rights record, as well as protecting those looking for safe haven. The undermining of the immigrants’ dignity is a central theme of those narrations, which see them as degraded to mere bargaining chips – and potential victims – of a legally and ethically ambiguous pact, ratified in the name of wicked (supra)national interests.

Concerns about the human welfare of migrants are more frequent in left-leaning newspapers. For right-leaning newspapers, the deal’s biggest flaw is not its undesirable effects on people, but rather its unrealistic premise that the EU can actually live up to a minimum standard of statecraft. Nevertheless, some do draw attention to the questionable ethical and legal status of the deal, reporting legal experts’ warnings that the agreement with the Turkish government “falls foul of a number of pieces of EU and international law, including that asylum seekers must have their cases assessed as individuals” (Holehouse 2016). At the same time, The Independent (2016) presents an array of stories that include humanity concerns – the EU’s failure to strike “a genuinely humanitarian deal, not a cynical political fix”. While humanity concerns are spelled out in plainer terms in The Guardian (2016):

Considerations of self-interest in the negotiation cannot be glossed over; however, it should be noted that it is only at the MSs level that self-interest and fear of refugees go hand in hand. In contrast, the EU’s collective self-interest implies preserving freedom of movement for those within the EU’s common borders, which calls for an effective and humane common asylum policy. Destination countries have the right to safeguard their territory and population, and reserve access and assistance to asylum seekers only. Yet, victims of oppression in their countries of origin or transit should not have to pay the price of the destinations countries’ inability to distinguish humanitarian from economic migrants fairly and effectively, and to address transnational human movements and their causes. It is the duty of the EU to prevent this.

While asylum seeker-centred humanitarian narratives dwindle to a trickle in the Brexit referendum period, they flare up again in the eventless week. Left-leaning papers accuse European governments of providing asylum seekers and migrants with inadequate protection against the perils faced at sea or along the Balkan route, while the British government is at fault for receiving such a limited number of Syrian refugees through its resettlement programme, as well as for the subtle discrimination in terms of service provisions to the few that actually make it to the UK. However, while the main focus of this narrative is on non-European immigrants (mainly asylum seekers), the freedom of movement granted by the Single Market to all EU citizens is also relevant; indeed, it may be regarded as an instance of cosmopolitan principles implemented on a distinct political dimension through the European integration process (Telò 2004).

Occurrences of conceptions of justice across narratives

It appears that the non-domination claim provides a normative rationale to narratives falling under the heading ‘the threatened island nation’ in only half of all occurrences, framing migration as the source of a serious threat to material, political and demographic stability and integrity, as well as the very identity of the country. On the other hand, non-domination informs ‘the EU matters’ narrative in slightly less than one-third of all instances. This corresponds not so much to the perception of a threat; for instance, with EU membership providing a corridor for both EU and third country immigrants, burdening social services, lowering salaries and competing (unfairly) for jobs, as to a way to get back to basics and re-establish the institutional and political settings that accounted for British exceptionalism (Hall 2011; Peterson 1999). In this sense, regaining full control of border protection and immigration management is a matter of institutional soundness, and of going back to the common sense criteria of British politics, necessarily at odds with the need for extraordinary coordination and institutional transformation required by EU membership. Similarly, non-domination associated with the socio-economic narrative signals a preference for the day-to-day administration of migration policy, including financial resources, relying on national traditions and institutional resources rather than the patronage of international regimes (Geddes and Scholten 2016; Joppke 1999).

As far as justice as impartiality is concerned, there is the expected peak of occurrences in narratives construing migration as a matter of protecting the vulnerable, be they asylum seekers and refugees whose status is guaranteed by international protection regimes, or other people deserving sanctuary and support. These are themes frequently debated on either side of the political spectrum, albeit to a higher degree in left-leaning newspapers such as The Guardian. They point out the country’s aloofness to the migration crisis, evidenced by the limited scope and magnitude of the Syrian refugee relocation programme, and the alleged progressive detachment from the legal and institutional structure upholding the international protection regimes (and today’s international order at large). On the other hand, justice as impartiality also informs a significant number of ‘the EU matters’ narratives. Arguably, there are two reasons for this. First, this claim provides a moral rationale for dealing with the myriad strongly-felt issues relative to British and EU citizens’ freedom of movement. Though largely unrelated to the migration crisis, these issues form a consistent part of the British debate on (im)migration. Second, the problem of how to provide asylum seekers with a safe haven despite domestic political and economic constraints is often observed though the lens of EU-related discourses. The so-called ‘jungle’ in Calais is important for understanding how a humanitarian emergency tends to be expressed in terms of the country’s relationship with the Common European Asylum System, which frequently blurs into a narrative about the EU as such.

The (relative) predominance of (im)migration-related narratives framing migrants as mere potential threats, or as the abstract subjects (i.e. holders of rights) of often flawed international protection regimes, creates an environment that is unreceptive to mutual recognition. According to this notion what is ‘just’ is not based on pre-determined criteria, but on the tales told by immigrants and locals of their experiences, expressing their individual and collective identities and developing connections between/within communities. Mutual recognition is not particularly pre-eminent in ‘EU narratives’ since it hinges mostly on issues such as policy responses to the repercussions of migration, opportunities and constraints of EU membership, and party politics, showing little interest in the establishment of an inter-subjective dialogue. In the same vein, the ‘threatened island’ narratives have virtually no connection with this normative notion. Conversely, justice as mutual recognition emerges most frequently, albeit with a lower rate of occurrence compared to other conceptions of justice, in narratives addressing migration as a socio-economic matter to the extent that they prove more sensitive to the concrete circumstances of the people involved in migration processes. Moreover, mutual recognition also informs ‘migration as a question of humanity’ narratives insofar as considerations for the natural rights of people are complemented with an attention for their ordinary experiences as immigrants, and their relationship with locals.

Occurrences of conceptions of justice across periods

There do not seem to be any dramatic shifts in the occurrence of the three claims of justice in the four periods  (Figure 1). Even the ‘outlier’ weeks (those before and after the 2014 European Parliament elections) show similar overall percentages compared to the 2016-17 periods. Justice as non-domination remains the top-ranking claim, upheld by a robust association of the two most frequent narratives, while justice as impartiality also emerges quite considerably and consistently across all periods considered. The relatively marginal position of justice as mutual recognition varies very little.

Justice Claims in UK Media Narratives: Normative Orientations and EU Migration Governance

All authors

Cinzia Bevitori & Antonio Zotti

https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2019.1641780

Published online:

27 September 2019

Figure 1. Claims of justice in the four periods

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Arguably, one of the reasons for the relative lack of variance of all justice claims over the various periods analysed is the British debate’s strong focus on the domestic dimension, also because of the comparatively high degree of isolation from the migration crisis, and the more or less deliberate linkage of migration discourse to EU issues, which remained the centrepiece of national debates in all periods considered. Indeed, the kind of narratives and underlying justice claims in the press during the eventless week (January 2017) implies a further increase in attention dedicated to the domestic dimension of the migration phenomena. Paradoxically, further evidence of the increasing salience of “all that concerns the EU” at the very time the country was struggling to come up with a less binding (possibly not binding) relationship with it serves as a particularly compelling indication of Britain’s deep Europeanisation of the immigration debate (Caviedes 2015; Pfetsch et al. 2008).