David Eric John Herbert

Why Are Some Are More Equal than Others? Analysing Attitudes to a Changing European Asylum Landscape through the case of the UK: Hierarchies of Preference and the Outsourcing of Asylum Responsibilities (with Alex Yendell, Leipzig University)

This small project grows out of discussions within the research group on migration, integration and mobility (MIM), and will comprise a national representative survey conducted in the UK in September or October 2022 and analysis of digital media discourse (social and news media) conducted in English language sources (underway) and for comparison in Norwegian, German and Danish.

The European landscape for refugees and asylum seekers is changing fast. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered a new wave of Ukrainian refugees, mostly women and children, with the EU waiving visa requirements to smooth the path for displaced people. However, this reception stands in marked contrast to that of refugees from the war in Syria in 2014-15 in many cases, and from other recent conflicts (De Witte 2022), which reflect trends towards the securitization and criminalisation of asylum seekers by governments across Europe:     

Migrants, including asylum seekers, who do manage to enter irregularly Council of Europe member states are often criminalised, locked up in prison-like conditions, and expelled as quickly as possible – even to countries where they risk persecution and torture. (Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, 2022).

Differential treatment of asylum seekers has produced some stark contrasts, from African students fleeing Ukraine ‘trapped at the borders, prevented from boarding trains (by Ukrainians) or from entering neighbouring countries (by Polish border guards)’ to ‘Middle Eastern refugees on the Belarusian border [who] face the option of crossing into war-torn Ukraine or being beaten back by Polish guards’ (ODI 2022 a, b). Such border scenes arguably make visible troubling forces at work across Europe, suggesting that a ‘racialized [and arguably gendered] hierarchy’ of preference shapes government asylum policies and informs the attitudes of border officials (ODI 2022b). Hence our first research question: how far does differential treatment of asylum seekers in policy and practice reflect broader public opinion? (RQ1)

The post-Brexit UK provides an interesting ‘laboratory’ in which to address this question. As a Council of Europe member, the UK is bound by the same obligations to asylum seekers as other European governments but has used asylum policy to mark post-Brexit difference, requiring Ukrainians to apply for a visa (though under more lenient conditions than other applicants). More radically, the UK has struck a deal with Rwanda for the total offshoring of the processing and resettlement of refugees arriving by irregular routes - with the first deportations thwarted only by the late intervention of the European Court. This policy has sharply divided public opinion in the UK. A YouGov poll (2022a) shows 43% support (27% strongly) the Rwanda asylum scheme with 40% opposed (28% strongly). However, it is unclear how well understood the policy or the principles at stake are, and why people support or oppose it. While the UK is not alone in seeking to offshore asylum processing (BBC 2021), offshoring resettlement is unprecedented in Europe, hence RQ2: in what ways and on what grounds do the public support or oppose offshoring asylum policy?

Contrary to these policy trends, explicit and declarative attitudes to immigration in the UK have become more positive (as in other Western European societies) in recent years, with positive answers to ‘does immigration make the UK a worse or better place to live?’ rising above 50% in 2018, up from just over 30% in 2014 (ODI 2022b), and those believing that that UK should accept fewer refugees falling from 20% in 2019 to 10% in April 2022 (YouGov 2022b). More work is needed to tease out the factors shaping individual attitudes and the process of public opinion formation, and to investigate whether and to what extent the apparently racialized hierarchy of preference visible in policy and media discourses (Bayoumi 2022) reflects explicit attitudes or, in contrast, is based on tacit, implicit, and non-declarative ethnic attitudes and racial stereotypes. We will complement the survey by analysing news media discourse (using Media Cloud) and social media debate on Twitter and Facebook (using NodeXL) to compare with other countries (e.g. Norway, Germany, Denmark).

The work builds on a survey last August also co-funded by småforsk, which innovated in combining psycho-social factors (Yendell) with social media use and discursive contact factors (Herbert) to explain over half the variation in support for far-right attitudes and conspiracy thinking in a representative sample from the UK and Austria. Findings were presented at the ESA last August with an article in peer review for Politics and Governance, and two further articles in preparation. The new survey will benefit from scales developed through this survey, lead to further publications and deepen collaboration within the department and internationally, strengthening networks for new research bids to national and international sources.

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