Understanding the UK’s Response to Refugees
Given the United Kingdom’s moral and legal commitments to human rights, why do we see a striking shift in its willingness to accept refugees in Europe’s current refugee crisis?
With a record of 1,015,078 people crossing the Mediterranean in 2015, Europe is facing the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II (UNHCR, 2018). However, European states remain torn over how to address the situation. In fact, ex-UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described it as “not just a crisis of numbers” but “also a crisis of solidarity” (UN, 2016). This lack of solidarity exists most obviously towards the vulnerable refugees reaching Europe – which states such as the United Kingdom have legal and moral responsibilities to accept. In 2015, the EU established a refugee relocation scheme to address the massive influx of people – a plan which the UK chose to opt-out of (European Commission, 2015). At the turn of the millennium, when asked about the most important issue facing their country, less than 5% of Britons cited immigration; in 2016, this number had risen to 34% (Blinder and Allen, 2016: 3). Similarly, in 2016, Prime Minister David Cameron agreed to take in 3,000 refugee children from camps within Europe; upon taking office, current Prime Minister Theresa May ended this commitment after only 350 had been brought to the UK (Travis and Taylor, 2017). Our aim is therefore to explore the reasons behind this striking shift in willingness to accept refugees.
We will be exploring two hypotheses: the view that refugees pose a real threat to the economy, and the logic that there is political intent behind the refugees’ securitization. Refugees undeniably bring economic changes to host countries in the short-term; however, longer-term considerations reveal the benefits associated with their arrival. This suggests that an underlying political intent better explains the UK’s shift in willingness to accept refugees. Guided by a political intent to advance particular policies and divert public discontent away from themselves, British leaders have successfully securitized refugees by portraying them as existential threats to the UK’s security – despite them not necessarily being objective, existential threats.
Migrants or refugees?
The ongoing crisis’ complexity is exacerbated by the difficulty in determining the status and rights of those arriving. Refugees are defined as being unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.” This differs from migrants, who choose to move mainly to improve their lives, and – theoretically – face no impediment to return (UNHCR, 2011: 14). As a signatory of the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1967 Protocol, the UK legally undertook to protect refugees by allowing them to enter its country and “grant temporary or permanent resident status to them” (Garcia-Zamor, 2017: 583). However, Patrascu explains how “more often than not”, the terms migrant and refugee are conflated without a “clear terminological distinction between them” (2015: 45). UNHCR warns about the dangers of this: not only does it take “attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require” (therefore facilitating a shift in willingness to accept), but it also undermines the public support for them (UNHCR, 2017).
Throughout this paper, we will focus specifically on refugees as defined by UNHCR. However, the shift in British willingness cannot be understood without considering how in political rhetoric, refugees are often discursively associated with the broader category of migrants, a link which facilitates the portrayal of them as security threats. This grouping of foreigners due to their “otherness” creates the grounds for confusion, simplification and manipulation, which are conducive to a general shift in willingness to accept.
Refugees as an economic threat
A first explanation of the UK’s unwillingness to accept refugees suggests that they pose a real threat to the economy; the abandonment of responsibilities towards them is therefore an inevitable policy response to the negative economic externalities of their arrival. However, while such a massive influx of people will undoubtedly translate into short-term economic changes and investments, long-term considerations reveal that refugees – and migrants more generally – represent a demographic opportunity for the socio-economic future of aging European countries. This puts the reality of the economic threat posed by refugees into question, suggesting that it cannot independently explain the British shift in willingness to accept them.
Huysmans explains how in this analysis, “the security problem triggers the security policy” (2000: 757). In other words, refugees are real security threats to the economy: the only way to address the issues the economy faces because of them is to prevent them from being there altogether. The security agenda is therefore expanded beyond its traditional military-political focus to consider any issue which existentially threatens any referent object as a potential security threat (Buzan et al., 1998: 21). Refugees fall under the broader category of “strangers” who “exploit the society that is so kind as to house them” (Huysmans 2000: 768) by increasing unemployment through competition with locals over scarce resources, or depressing wages through cheap labor provision. In other words, they threaten the British economy. This general sentiment is mirrored in headlines of British newspapers: “Migrants grab 12,000 jobs a month” (The Daily Express) (Greenslade, 2016) or “The UK is to open its doors to hundreds of Syrians. What part of ‘there are not enough jobs/schools/homes/places/hospital beds’ do the politicians not understand?” (The Sun) (Patrascu, 2015: 46). In the second headline, Syrians are specifically targeted – despite their status as refugees. In both, the conflation of migrants and refugees as previously discussed is evident: in the eyes of the public, it is easy to confuse all racial or cultural “others” as being equally harmful and undeserving. Furthermore, casting migrants (intended in its broadest sense) as “job thieves” echoes the fears of lower-class readership – hinting at an underlying political intent which we will later discuss.
Upon further analysis however, the reality of the economic threat posed by refugees is put into question. If integrated correctly into the host society, refugees’ impact on the economy can be a positive one, even helping to address many of the socio-economic and demographic issues facing the UK. Ban Ki-moon explained how “demonizing [refugees] is not only morally wrong, it is factually wrong” as they are “famously devoted to self-reliance, [and] bring new skills and dynamism into aging workforces” (UN, 2016). The Economist quantifies the refugees’ impact on public expenditure in the EU, conceding that – in the very short run – refugees will indeed add 0.19% of EU GDP to public expenditure. However, following their integration into the workforce, refugees are expected to increase the EU’s annual output by 0.1% (2016). Given the relative youth of those currently reaching Europe, in the long-run they will also contribute to the social security system as tax-payers. Since the UK’s population is ageing, this influx of young workers will help reverse the rising cost of state pensions as a portion of GDP (Ibid, 2016). This is particularly promising given that there are “glimmers of evidence” that refugees reaching Europe are “relatively skilled”, meaning that they will not enter society at the bottom of the workforce and it will therefore take less time for them to “pay more in tax than they receive in state support” (Ibid, 2016). The impact of immigration of average British wages is also very small: between 2000 and 2007 for example, it decreased them by 0.3% (FullFact, 2017). It is hard to see a 0.3% decrease in wages as a rational justification for the British abandonment of strong legal and moral commitments to refugees. Therefore, empirical evidence highlights the problems associated with seeing refugees as a real economic threat. In conclusion, although an influx of refugees undoubtedly comes with significant economic changes and investments, long-term considerations reveal the vast benefits associated with their arrival. It follows that the economic threat posed by refugees is not as real as it may first seem; independently, it cannot explain the shift in British willingness to accept refugees.
Political intent driving the securitization of refugees
The shift in willingness to accept refugees can therefore be understood through an overarching political intent to advance particular political policies, and to address public dissatisfaction by scapegoating refugees as the root of the UK’s problems. This political intent leads to the securitization of refugees, where they are portrayed as existentially threatening different aspects of British security.
The concept of securitization is crucial to understanding this underlying political intent. Securitization is the process which presents an issue as “an existential threat which requires emergency measures and therefore justifies actions outside the normal bounds of political procedures” (Buzan et al., 1998: 23 – 24). Buzan explains how securitization is not the innocent reflection of something being a security threat, but rather a political choice loaded with political intent (Ibid: 29). In this view what matters is not whether refugees pose a real, objective threat to the UK – as discussed in the previous section’s hypothesis – but rather whether they are successfully presented as threatening (Buzan et al., 1998: 25). Therefore, even if the reality of refugees’ economic threat is questionable, they can still be successfully portrayed as threatening – leading to the same policies. In response, Knudsen adopts a more traditional view, stating that he has a “problem with the underlying implication that it is unimportant whether states ‘really’ face dangers from other states or groups” as he sees this as discounting “an independent existence for whatever is perceived as a threat” (Knudsen, 2001: 359). By exploring the political intent driving the securitization of refugees, we counter Knudsen’s traditional view.
Therefore, what is the political intent behind the securitization of refugees which leads to the abandonment of British responsibilities towards them? A first explanation is the desire for political parties to increase the popularity of their policies. Populist and far-right parties are characterized by their criticism of established sociopolitical and sociocultural systems, support for national prioritization, and defence of ethnic nationalism (Lazaridis and Tsagkroni, 2015: 207). Still, Hainsworth sees immigration as “the extreme right’s issue par excellence” (Ibid: 210). This is exemplified by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which has recently increased in popularity: among the working-class, its approval rate is 3% higher than the Labour Party (Roberts, 2017). In its 2017 manifesto, UKIP lists immigration first among its “major issues of the day” (2017: 3). It explains wanting to “reduce net migration to zero, over a five-year period” (Ibid, 32). Naturally, this means a drastic decrease in the number of people entering the country, including refugees; it therefore implies a shift in willingness to accept them. In order to advance such anti-immigration policies, UKIP must successfully portray non-Britons as a threat. In an interview with Fox News, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage stressed that “there is a direct link and relationship between the number of people you let in from different religions and different cultures, and the number of terror attacks” (Fox News: 2017). Through such xenophobic and racialized thinking, migrants and refugees are depicted not only as “deserving a different type of humanity” but also “as a different type of humanity” (Walia, 2014: 34), towards whom even strong legal and moral commitments can be abandoned. In reality, the UN Special Rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights explains that the perception of refugees and migrants as terrorists is “analytically and statistically unfounded” as there is “no evidence that migration leads to increased terrorist activity” (OHCHR, 2016). Manipulating the objective reality of the threat, UKIP’s portrayal of “others” as security threats fuels the public’s fears regarding terrorism. By providing a solution to these worries in radical anti-immigration policies, UKIP successfully uses the securitization of migrants and refugees as a means of advancing its policies. This therefore accounts for the shift in the willingness to accept them.
A second reason behind the politically-driven securitization of refugees is leaders’ intent to remove themselves as culprits for the socio-economic issues facing Britain. Following the 2008 recession, the Financial Times reports that Britain experienced the slowest recovery in output since the 1920s, and only in mid-2015 did GDP per capita reach pre-recession levels (Jackson et al., 2018). Evidently, this led to public dissatisfaction. Leaders therefore used the securitization of refugees as a means of removing themselves from a position of direct responsibility in these issues. As explained by Huysmans, “immigrants, asylum-seekers, foreigners and refugees are constructed as scapegoats to remedy declining political legitimacy” (2000: 769). An example of this is the public dissatisfaction over the National Health Service (NHS), which has reached the highest point in a decade: those “very” or “quite” dissatisfied reached 29% in 2017 (Neville, 2017). In parallel, right-wing newspapers such as the Daily Mail accuse the NHS of being “stretched to the limit by refugees” (Hope). Here, the media can be seen as reflective of political views, as Patrascu explains that politicians use “the media as a publicity and legitimizing instrument for their programs and policies” (2015: 49). Although NHS’ problems can be exacerbated by the influx of refugees, they stem from a much larger governmental funding crisis and system failure: by 2021, the NHS will have a £30 billion budget deficit (Cooper, 2014). Admitting direct governmental responsibility in this would put the government’s legitimacy into question, and direct public dissatisfaction towards it. By portraying refugees and migrants as socio-economic threats through their securitization, politicians are therefore able to maintain their legitimacy. The NHS example is one among many, with Lazaridis and Tsagkroni arguing that migrants and refugees are the “scapegoats for any problem a country faces” (2015: 208). Therefore, the politically-driven elevation of refugees as existential threats leads to a shift in willingness to accept them, and ultimately justifies otherwise unjustifiable polities – such as the abandonment of legal and moral responsibilities towards refugees.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the recent shift in British willingness to accept refugees cannot be understood without considering the political intent driving their securitization. This is rooted in the idea that securitization is not the reflection of something being a real security threat, but rather a political choice to successfully present it as so. In fact, while refugees undeniably bring economic changes and investments to host countries in the short term, not only is their impact on the UK not as drastic as it may first seem, but longer-term considerations reveal that they can actually be a positive force on the economy. This therefore puts the objective reality of the economic threat posed by refugees into question, consequentially stressing the presence of a deeper political intent behind the recent shift in British willingness to accept refugees. As seen in the analysis of UKIP’s manipulation of facts regarding terrorism to advance its radical anti-immigration policies, or the blaming of refugees for the structural issues facing the NHS, the overarching political intent to advance particular policies or address public dissatisfaction drives the securitization of refugees, which in turn leads to a shift in British willingness to accept them. These conclusions crucially increase our awareness of the underlying complexities of the ongoing refugee crisis; they must be taken into consideration not only to ensure that legal and moral commitments to refugees are upheld, but also to facilitate their integration into host societies – with clear benefits for all.
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