Demonising immigrants: how a human rights narrative has contributed to negative portrayals of immigrants in the UK media

Drywood, EW ORCID: 0000-0003-2856-4775 and Gray, Harriet ORCID: 0000-0001-6658-9717 (2019) Demonising immigrants: how a human rights narrative has contributed to negative portrayals of immigrants in the UK media. In: Human Rights in the Media: Fear and Fetish. Routledge,London. ISBN 978-1-138-64581-3

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Abstract

Immigrants of all types – asylum-seekers, refugees, EU migrants, reunified family members – have suffered at the hands of a predominantly hostile press. Language is incendiary; the factual basis of stories is questionable; negative events dominate reporting. In this chapter, we explore the role of human rights in stories about migrants in the UK media. Through this exploration, we argue that a human rights narrative has exacerbated the negativity surrounding immigrants in the UK press. This may seem somewhat counter-intuitive given that human rights are often the very mechanism by which migrants have resisted aggressive control of borders and rampant destruction of non-nationals’ legal status by European nation states. In support of our core thesis, however, we advance a series of arguments which demonstrate that the legal architecture of human rights and their failings as a grassroots project have shaped a rhetoric which, in turn, has had a decidedly negative impact upon popular perceptions of immigration in the UK media.

Item Type:	Book Section
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	06 Aug 2018 06:41
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:29
DOI:	10.4324/9781315627922-6
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3024556