An article based on excerpts from a chapter in the book, Bad News for Refugees by the Glasgow Media Group. It examines, in a detailed content analysis of sixty-nine articles in UK national papers in June 2011, how the rightwing press helped set the political agenda on immigration through a consistent conflation of issues of economic and forced migration, an emphasis on numbers as a threat, the pointing to migrants as an economic burden and potential criminals and a stress on the need for immigration controls.
See Liz Fekete, A Suitable Enemy: racism, migration and Islamophpbia in Europe (London, Pluto Press, 2009).
2.
The methodology for the study and the way that this sample was arrived at are discussed in full in chapters 2 and 4 of Bad News for Refugees.
3.
There were also ten statements by transnational organisations, one of which was supportive, and international authorities or government sources were quoted five times. There were two statements from members of the public, one of which was strongly critical of provisions to the migrants it discussed, and four statements from academics and independent experts, of which one was supportive.
4.
There was no response given from members of the legal profession in the article, only one quotation from a ‘Ministry of Justice’ spokesperson.
