Resultado de las propuestas

As argued in Section I, politicians present themselves as ‘managers of unease’, simultaneously attempting and appearing to protect the ingroup by adding further salience to the threat of immigration through public debate and policy creation. According to Corbett, this salience is amplified in the right-wing populist environment, which is a ‘“twofold vertical structure” that is antagonistic upward towards the intellectual, political and economic elites, and downward towards those at the bottom of society: criminals, foreigners, profiteers who threaten the

121 _Corbett,p23

33 purity of the people’.123 _{Populist leaders and parties embed these structures by articulating and} reshaping popular grievances.

In Britain, Nigel Farage’s UKIP filled the vacuum of class politics with cultural politics, contributing to and capitalising on the salience of immigration to voters (Deacon & Smith 2017, Evans 2017, Flemmen & Savage 2017). Between 2010 and 2015, UKIP went from capturing 3.1% to 12.6% of the overall vote, with their promise of a ‘crackdown’ on all forms of immigration through Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.124 At the European Parliament in 2015, Farage argued that the majority of refugees ‘are economic migrants’, that there is ‘evidence that ISIS are now using this route to put their jihadists on European soil’ and that ‘[w]e must be mad to take this risk with the cohesion of our societies’, thus drawing on all four historical anti-refugee discourses in one speech.125 UKIP’s cross-class appeal merged elite-based Euroscepticism and widespread anti-immigration sentiment, evident throughout their Brexit campaign.

Nigel Farage posing with UKIP Brexit poster in London, June 16126

123 _Corbett,p10 124 _BBC,2015 125 _BBC,2015(2) 126 _{The Guardian,2016}

34 However, in the UK case, it is also the mainstream parties (Conservatives and Labour) that have essentialised the refugee threat. In 2015, both mainstream parties, who won 37% and 30% of the vote respectively, had restrictive reforms at the centre of their campaigns.127 _The Conservatives, historically ‘best on migration’, promised to cut net migration to ‘tens of thousands’, while Labour, having lost the public’s trust on the issue in previous decades, promised to strengthen the ‘system of controls’ against illegal and low skilled migration and deprive migrants of benefits for their first two years on UK soil.128 David Cameron’s statements in the period emulated elements of each discourse (see Elgot 2016), including the stereotype of the ‘submissiveness of Muslim women’, to argue that they may not speak out when they see radicals influencing their family members.

As a source and outcome of politics, the same themes were evident in government policy. The Conservatives, led by David Cameron with Theresa May as Home Secretary, won both the 2010 and 2015 general elections. In line with their manifesto, 2011 to 2016 saw a decrease of asylum support rates to below-poverty levels, the establishment of the Syrian Vulnerable Person Resettlement Programme and the extension of the counter-terrorism framework – each drawing on a discourse outlined in Section I.

Looking first at the government’s role in consolidating non-entrée and extending the “bogus” discourse, Home Secretary Theresa May was an outspoken supporter of the continuation of the Dublin Regulation. Accordingly refugees must claim asylum in the first EU country in which they arrive, allowing Britain’s deportation of secondary claimants.129 _{Meanwhile, Britain refused to} sign onto the EU’s relocation and resettlement scheme, composed of mandatory refugee quotas designed to ensure EU “burden-sharing”.130 _{However, the UK went further than simply}

127 _{UK Political Info,2015}

128 _{Wilkinson,2015} 129 _Travis,2017 130 _{Home Office,2016}

35 “sitting out” of the European refugee crisis.131 _{In 2014, the Conservatives introduced the} Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Programme, proposed by Theresa May on the basis that the asylum system ‘rewarded the wealthiest, the luckiest and the strongest’ while failing ‘the most vulnerable’.132 _{This two-tiered system, which imposed differential treatment of refugees, was} costly and ineffective, resettling 2659 of the promised 8000 refugees by June 2016.133 The Programme was argued legally unsound by UNHCR, framing genuine refugees as undeserving or “bogus” economic migrants, whose alleged “wealth”, “luck” and “strength” delegitimised their appeal for refuge from persecution.

In the face of mounting pressure from the EU in 2015, David Cameron agreed to bring a further 3000 lone children from the Middle East through the Programme. That number was quickly reduced to 350. 134 However, the constant differentiation in policy and political statements between “innocent” refugee children and undeserving (and potentially dangerous) refugee men must be seen in the context of the securitisation discourse. The seventh major counter- terrorism law introduced in Britain since 9/11 was the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act of 2015, preceded by the revision of CONTEST (UK counter-terrorism strategy) in 2011. The ‘prevent’ pillar of CONTEST was criticised for alienating Muslim communities contra community cohesion, legitimising and reinforcing Islamophobia and restricting Muslims’ freedom of expression.135 _{The Muslim Council of Britain further criticised the 2015 Act on the grounds that} it linked immigrant Muslim communities with terrorism by decreasing funding and increasing surveillance (with both overt and covert cameras) in Muslim neighbourhoods.136 _Ultimately, though the words “Muslim” and “immigrant” were meticulously avoided in 2011 to 2016 securitisation policy, the linkage between adult male refugees, crime and terror was implicit and, as argued in the following chapter, reaffirmed by the media.

131 _Travis,2017 132 _Ibid. 133 _{Home Office,2016} 134 _Travis,2017 135 _Dodd,2009

36 It is thus clear that political forces in the period under study added impetus to anti-refugee sentiment and built on previous anti-refugee discourses. In order to collate an accurate account of the strength of each discourse and associated stereotypes, the following paragraphs turn to the media.