“Increasingly refugees and Internally Displaced
Persons are regarded as harbingers of insecurity, rather than victims of it” –
Discuss with reference to two case studies.

In an interview
with the New York Times last year, the late Polish sociologist and philosopher
Zygmunt Bauman quoted Bertolt Brecht by saying; Immigrants personify particular
fears and anxiety in privileged inhabitants of a place, about losing their
economic, cultural and hence political place and status in the world. Bauman
explained that “refugees and migrants bring with them a certain insecurity
regarding mysterious and obscure global forces that disturb the stable idea of
a neighborhood, a habitat. Hence the world’s resentment of dispossessed people,
who are demonized, ironically, for what they do not possess rather than what
they do”. The essay’s main argument follows Bauman’s line of thought and
expands on it in three main ways. Firstly, the mainstream media when is mostly
unbalanced when covering refugees and internally displaced persons, often they
portray them in a negative manner. Furthermore, those who are fleeing from
conflict in the Middle East are viewed as “the other”, they are made to be
feared by the media and the government, often government officials use
dehumanizing language when referring to them. Secondly, the securitization
theory developed by the Copenhagen School explains why this group of people are
categorized as a security threat, they are politicized and generalized as a
security threat because of the actions of a few. Thirdly, within this context
there are some countries such as Germany who have opened their borders and have
taken on the responsibility of settling refugees, have to an extent balanced media
coverage and are accepting as a whole. In order to explain these points in
depth, this essay will be using the UK and Germany as a comparison. Therefore,
this paper will agree with the quote “increasingly refugees and Internally
Displaced Persons are regarded as harbingers of insecurity, rather than victims
of it” especially in the current atmosphere of Islamophobia and deadly
terrorist attacks that are mostly linked to “Muslims” by the Media and several
European governments, it doesn’t help that most refugees seeking refuge in the
West come from the Middle East and North Africa.

HISTORICAL
CONTEXT:

In the aftermath of the Cold War, the more utopian prophets of globalization argued that the rise of a new “borderless” world was in the making and national borders would soon become irrelevant and obsolete. Many governments have since then dismantled systems that promote barriers and tariffs in an effort to encourage the free movement of capital and commodities, and engaged in regional and transnational agreements that have renounced traditional tenets of national sovereignty. At the same time, the past two decades have also been regarded as an “unprecedented political concern with borders being viewed as symbolic markers of national identity, and as barricades against the movement of unwanted people”[1] (in this case refugees and IDP’s). In various countries, from the United States to Britain, governments continue to reinforce their borders with new physical barriers, technologies and personnel.

The process of
simultaneously softening yet hardening borders has been particularly conspicuous
in the European Union. On the one hand, European governments have created a
“united Europe” with the reintegration of Eastern and Western Europe through
abolishing internal border checks and the creation of a “vast space of freedom,
security, and justice”, which just a few decades ago seemed almost impossible.
Within this space approximately 500 million European citizens can live and work
freely anywhere on the continent. On the other hand, European governments have
simultaneously gone to extraordinary and unprecedented lengths to limit and
monitor the entry of people coming in from outside the continent (particularly
refugees and IDP’s). European governments make sure to have police, soldiers,
border guards, naval patrols and an array of physical barriers and different
technology at the borders, this amounts to the most extensive border
enforcement effort in history. The overarching priority behind the new border
regimes is aimed at preventing ‘illegal immigration’.

Evidently this
draconian style system has had devastating consequences for the people it is
designed to exclude. In the past few years at least 15,000 migrants have lost
their lives while trying to cross the EU’s maritime and land borders. Migrants
have gone so far as to kill themselves while trying to escape deportation,
detention or simply because they were reduced to stateless destitution – “It
has now become an undeclared war that not only views but treats migrants as
criminals, as harmful intruders, as a signal of insecurity and they must be
kept at bay through a quasi military enforcement effort”[2]. The extensive security
efforts undertaken by most European countries during the refugee crisis
suggests that they view those fleeing conflict ridden countries and seeking
refuge in Europe as transporters of insecurity, violence and arguably
terrorism.

THE PERCEPTION
OF “THE OTHER” AND NEGATIVE PORTRAYAL OF THE REFUGEES IN THE MEDIA:

In addition to governments playing a vital role in furthering the opinion that refugees and IDP’s are harbingers of insecurity, the media is also undoubtedly an important tool in society. It targets urgent issues of the community. This has an impact on the readers, because many a times their opinions may be shaped or influenced by the media. In the case of the ongoing European refugee crisis, media coverage has given the public an insight in to the refugees escaping the conflict ridden Middle East. However there reporting has been mixed. On the one hand there has been outstanding coverage concentrating on the harsh reality of the struggles faced by those traversing the Middle East then mostly Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and beyond, in search of a safe haven mainly in Western Europe, often with young children in tow. Media outlets such as the Guardian and the Independent have often focused on the human element of the crisis. On the other hand, the right-wing media have in general reacted to this crisis differently, choosing to focus on national security instead. Publications such as The Daily Mail, The Sun and The Daily Mirror have reportedly been shunned on social media for using dehumanising language when reporting on the refugee crisis, firstly they often replace the word “refugee” with “migrants”. The difference in these two terms is crucial and “the editorial decision to use one term over the other necessarily impacts the tone of the article or feature that it relates to and therefore on how the public may respond to the report”. The United Nations defines refugees as ‘persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution’. Whereas migrants are defined as people ‘who choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or death but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education or other reasons’. For example, in 2006 a study was carried out and it was found that the term “illegal immigrants’” was used the most by The Mail (25) and The Times (18), the study found common usage of the term across all national media in the UK. In support of this study, was in the Telegraph when they reported that “David Cameron is to insist that illegal immigrants are deported to the European country in which they first arrived”[3]. However, these “illegal immigrants” are then defined as “people fleeing the troubles in North Africa and the Middle East”. This questions the accuracy of tabloid newspapers when they are unable to differentiate between the given categories – “In a climate where the British government is cutting expenditure and there is concern over scarce resources, irresponsible coverage may be opportunistically exploited by anti-immigration groups”[4]. 

Furthermore, the terminology employed when discussing refugees and IDP’s is more often than not negative in British Media, this tends to play on the emotions and pre-existing fears of the public as a whole, and could potentially result in a negative response towards accepting refugees. We live in a period where people like Katie Hopkins have a substantial following in British Media can refer to refugees dying in boats as “cockroaches” or when the Prime Minister speaks of “swarms of people, and the foreign secretary denigrates marauding Africans who seek to change our way of life”[5]. Refugees in this context are no more than insects, or are subject to crude racial stereotypes. This could suggest why a recent poll conducted by the BBC suggests that attitudes towards allowing refugees into Great Britain have hardened. From 31% in September 2015, it has increased to 41% so two in five people of the 2,204 people interviewed by Comres say Britain should accept fewer refugees from Syria and Libya.

Edward Said offers one explanation as to why refugees from the Middle
East and North Africa are treated as “the other”, the above paragraph has shown
how they are referred to in dehumanising language and Said argues this is
because there have always been negative connotations/ascribed terms attached to
the Arabs and although they may have changed according to the times, they still
belittle the Arabs. For example, in the past Arabs and Muslims were spoken
about in the West with terms like “erotic”, “primitive”, “ignorant”, “slave
traders” among other derogatory terms. Recently these words have been replaced with
terms such as “terrorist”, “fundamentalist”, and “blood thirsty”.  Such expressions when adopted by the
mainstream media at large tend to play on the fears that some may already have,
thus not only do they view the Muslim refugee as the “other” but they view them
through a negative lens and fear them even more. As a result, Howden claims
that the flurry of inaccurate or misleading reports had drowned out all context
– “the presence of openly racist and xenophobic stances among individuals,
policy makers and political movements is only part of the problem. Even the
more civilized and political correct is often very confused and poorly
informed”[6].
Lee and Lynn in support of this studied the way in which refugees and asylum
seekers were constructed in the UK media, through analysing letters from
members of the public discussing the asylum debate. They found that asylum
seekers and refugees were constructed in a negative way within these
discourses. This was achieved “through a reconstruction and repositioning of
the social order of the other groups in society so as to position them as
outside of society”.[7]

Said’s theory may prove to be true following the treatment of refugees
in Calais. In April 2009, a raid was conducted at the camp, French authorities
arrested 190 peoples and used bulldozers to destroy tents. The arrests were
made because they were “illegal inhabitants” even though they are/were
refugees.  Said once noted that the West
promotes a deep-rooted hatred for Islam, today Islam is “peculiarly traumatic
news in the West”. Especially since the Iranian Revolution of 1979 caught
Western attention, the media have portrayed Islam in a very misleading way –
“In many instances Islam has licensed not only patient inaccuracy, but also
expressions of unrestrained ethnocentrism, cultural and even racial, deep yet
paradoxically free-floating hostility”[8].
Which could explain why the Calais Jungle is so often described as an Islamic
invasion (Berlusconi’s Italy, extreme right wing politicians have called it an
invasion) which specifically targets Middle Eastern and North African refugees
as well as IDP’s because it is seen as an Islamic invasion that threatens to
undermine European culture and civilization.

THE SECURITIZATION OF MIGRANTS:

 An alternative explanation given
to understand why refugees are regarded as transporters of insecurity is the
securitization theory. The Copenhagen School has contributed greatly to the
formulation and advancement of the securitization theory; they contend that
there are choices involved when deciding what should be categorized as a
security threat. In this way, “whether or not issue is a security issue is
treated not as a result of its objective qualities but rather as a result of
what different people subjectively identify as security threats”. In this case,
the securitization of refugees is a clear indication that they are perceived as
security threats.  This section will thus
argue that Europe as a whole has to a great extent politicized migrants and asylum-seekers,
resulting in them being portrayed as a “challenge to the protection of national
identity and welfare provisions”[9].

Over the past few decades, public discourse in the UK has for the most
part shaped the concept of asylum in negative terms, many have gone so far as
to cast refugees and IDP’s as a security threat to the UK and its residents.
Often refugees and IDP’s have been categorised with undocumented workers or
‘illegal immigrants’. This association has resulted in them being viewed as a
threat to British society and its values, as well as a cause for concern for
the human security of state residents, such as the “health and welfare
services”. Although reasonable security measures are often necessary as part of
immigration policy, the issue at hand is the securitization of refugees and
IDP’s. Undoubtedly, characterization has negative implications for the group,
it also impacts the resident population. In this case, the conflation of
refugees with terrorism has “potentially serious implications as terrorism is,
by nature, intended to induce fear”[10].
Securitizing actors therefore, risks aggravating fears of terrorism by
connecting asylum seekers with terrorists and also claiming that they are
present in large numbers in the country.

The securitizing move in the UK rests on the basis that they are “a
liability, a risky group that needs to be prevented, contained and preferably,
repatriated is one that permeates liberal democracies”[11].
Therefore, among other negative characteristics, asylum seekers are most likely
dangerous and are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks against residents
of the UK, “thus threatening the existence of the referent object of security”.
“Since terrorism has become a part of the institutional framework of security,
drawing an association between asylum and terrorism greatly facilitates the
ease with which asylum itself can be securitized”[12].
Therefore, refugees and IDP’s are viewed as dangerous. Terrorist concerns are
paramount in the security arena for contemporary and categorizing a certain
group of people as security concerns undoubtedly securitizes them as well as
generalizes them.

THE OTHER SIDE:

Although quite a significant number of European countries have adopted a hard-line policy towards refugees and IDP’s as well as making it significantly difficult for them to apply for refugee status, Germany in contrast considered to be accommodating and willing to provide for refugees. Syrian refugees especially prefer Germany as a destination because they think of it as a wealthy, welcoming land that will provide them with housing, schooling for their children, and an abundance of jobs. There is a willingness to help Syrian refugees in the nation. In comparison to the UK, Germany’s response to the refugee crisis has been a lot more balanced and positive. Berlin has proposed a quota system where thousands of Germans have volunteered to help refugees, and press coverage has been more balanced; this cannot be said for the overall population as a whole but in contrast to Britain’s hardliner policy on refugees, Germany is strikingly accepting.

In Germany’s political discourse and conversation, a clear distinction
has been made between immigration and asylum whereas in Britain, ministers
after having witnessed the unfolding refugee crisis gripping Europe have not
made this distinction. For example, in an article by Theresa May who was the
home secretary at the time, promised a tough new approach to immigration. She
talked about “the events of this summer” but refrained from using the word
refugee. Critics have claimed that the government is intentionally blurring the
lines between the two separate categories (refugees and immigrants)[13].

When examining private engagement in Germany, thousands of German
citizens have volunteered to help the refugees arriving on a daily basis. Many
fill up their cars and homes with food, clothes and other basic needs. Others
have offered to teach German, translation and babysitting. This sort of
welcoming attitude is reiterated when an MP from Merkel’s CDU party Martin
Patzelt, housed two refugees from Eritrea. Whereas in Britain the refugee
crisis has not garnered such overwhelming support from the public. Although
lots of citizens do want to contribute, it is not the same.

Furthermore, two newspaper cuttings have highlighted the differences in
tabloid attitudes between the UK and Germany. In Britain, the likes of Katie
Hopkins writing for the Sun compared refugees crossing the Mediterranean to
cockroaches. Contrastingly, Germany’s best-selling newspaper, printed a picture
of two refugee children captioned “We are helping” as their headlines. The
difference could lie in the fact that even right-leaning tabloid newspapers in
Germany have a balanced coverage when covering migration, some might even argue
that it is sympathetic coverage. Whereas in Britain, the “tone of much tabloid
coverage has been remorselessly negative”. In May the Daily Mail printed “How
many more can Kos take?”, and then continued “thousands of boat people from
Syria and Afghanistan” had set up a migrant camp on the Greek Island, adding
that British holidaymakers found the situation “disgusting”[14].
It is quite clear when analysing how UK and Germany compare on migration that
Germany is trying make room refugees and does not perceive the presence of
these groups as a threat to security as much as the UK does.

As Dr Martin Luther King, JR said – the nation’s security is undeniably
an important end, however to refuse protection to vulnerable refugees, who have
been the victims of violence and terrorism, “does not advance this end: it
undermines it”. The threat to human security should supersede any threat to
national security. In conclusion this essay has shown how refugees and
internally displaced persons are regarded as transporters of insecurity
especially in the United Kingdom, where the tabloid media and the government
not only portrays them through a negative lens, but they fail to differentiate
between migrants and refugees, they use dehumanising language when referring to
them and have painted the whole group with the same brush. It has also shown
how the securitization theory helps us in understanding the way in which
refugees are chosen and categorized as a security threat. Finally on the flip
side, it has shown how some countries such as Germany have a more balanced
media coverage in comparison to the UK, and do not have such a hardliner border
policy when it comes to refugees in need of protection.

REFERENCES:

• Akrap, Doris. “Germany’S Response To The Refugee Crisis Is Admirable. But I Fear It Cannot Last | Doris Akrap”. the Guardian. N.p., 2017. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.
• Briant, Emma. “The UK Media Needs To Stop Referring To Refugees As “Illegal Immigrants””. Newstatesman.com. N.p., 2013. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.
• Harding, Luke, Philip Oltermann, and Nicholas Watt. “Refugees Welcome? How UK And Germany Compare On Migration”. The Guardian. N.p., 2015. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.
• Huysmans, Jef. “The European Union And The Securitization Of Migration”. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies 38.5 (2000): 751-777. Web.
• Parker, Samuel. “‘Unwanted Invaders’: The Representation Of Refugees And Asylum Seekers In The UK And Australian Print Media”. Cardiff University. N.p., 2017. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.
• Said, Edward W. Orientalism. 1st ed. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2014. Print.
• Said, Edward. Covering Islam: How The Media And The Experts Determine How We See The Rest Of The World. 1st ed. Vintage Books, 1997. Print.
• Shackle, Samira. “How Did It Become Acceptable For Britain To Treat Refugees So Badly?”. Newstatesman.com. N.p., 2015. Web. 6 Mar. 2017.
• “The Securitization Of Aslyum: Protecting UK Resident”. Refugee Studies Centre. N.p., 2010. Web. 3 Apr. 2017.
• Carr, Mathew. “Essay: Europe’S Hard Borders”. Redpepper.org.uk. N.p., 2017. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.
• Howden, Daniel. “Analysis: Media, Hysteria And The Calais Jungle”. Refugees Deeply. N.p., 2016. Web. 9 Apr. 2017.
• Ridouani, Driss. “The Representation Of Arabs And Muslims In The Western Media”. Meknes 3 (2011): n. pag. Print.

[1] Carr, Mathew. “Essay: Europe’S
Hard Borders”, 2012.

[2] Carr Mathew,2012.

[3] Briant,
Emma. “The UK Media Needs to Stop Referring To Refugees As “Illegal
Immigrants” ,2013.

[4] Shackle,
Samira. “How Did It Become Acceptable For Britain To Treat Refugees So
Badly?”, 2015.

[5] Shackle Samira, 2015.

[6] Howden, Daniel. “Analysis: Media, Hysteria And The
Calais Jungle”, 2016.

[7] Parker,
Samuel. “‘Unwanted Invaders’: The Representation of Refugees And Asylum
Seekers In The UK And Australian Print Media”, 2017.

[8] Ridouani, Driss. “The Representation Of Arabs And Muslims
In The Western Media”

[9] “The
Securitization Of Aslyum: Protecting UK Residents”, RSC. 2010

[10] RSC,2010

[11] RSC,2010

[12] RSC,2010

[13] Harding,
Luke, Philip Oltermann, and Nicholas Watt. “Refugees Welcome? How UK And
Germany Compare On Migration”, 2015.

[14] Harding, Luke, Philip
Oltermann, and Nicholas Watt, 2015.