Public acceptance and tolerance of refugees have become increasingly politicised across the Western world, with refugees often portrayed as a threat to states’ way of life. Refugees are framed within a dichotomy of security threat versus a humanitarian issue (Devereux, 2017), and their right to seek asylum has become increasingly contested under UK government plans. This research explores how small-boat refugees are routinely demonised in political narratives and the subsequent impacts that these pose on refugee policy. Acknowledging the theoretical purposes of these political actions is key to understanding how framing can be an ideological tool. By using a postcolonial approach, this research aims to understand how irregular refugees are systematically targeted by threat narratives and integration concerns perpetuated by politicians. It addresses the following research question: How do political narratives shape the framing of refugees in the context of the UK’s small-boat ‘crisis’?

This research explores three interconnected themes. Firstly, it examines the dominant political narratives employed by politicians to frame refugees arriving via small-boats. It then investigates how these narratives construct and reinforce the concept of ‘otherness’ and will consider the purpose behind such portrayals. Finally, it assesses the political implications of these narratives, particularly their influence on refugee policy and wellbeing.

It is important to note that throughout this research, the term ‘refugees’ is used to refer to individuals arriving in the UK via small-boats, despite the broader and often interchangeable use of ‘migrants’ that is frequently seen in political and media discourse. This choice is deliberate and reflects the fact that many of these individuals arriving in the UK are fleeing conflict, persecution, or other circumstances that qualify them for protection under the 1951 Geneva Convention (UNHCR, 2025). While the term ‘migrant’ and ‘immigrant’ is often seen in political discourse to delegitimise these journeys, this research adopts the term refugees to challenge such framing and to acknowledge the legal and humanitarian realities facing those seeking asylum. This distinction resists reductive and problematic narratives that obscure the rights and experiences of people crossing via small-boats. The research findings would remain the same if the term ‘migrant’ were used instead of ‘refugee.’

This literature review outlines the key debates surrounding UK refugee discourse, drawing on research about political framing, securitisation, and postcolonial theories of otherness. It establishes the conceptual foundation for analysing how small‑boat refugees are represented in political narratives and why these portrayals carry significant social and policy implications.

Contextualising Refugee Discourse

The global movement of refugees has long been a point of political contention since the introduction of the Aliens Act 1905, which imposed sanctions and restricted entry for ‘undesirable immigrants’ (Bashford and McAdam, 2014), as well as Margaret Thatcher setting it on the political agenda of the 1979 election (Francis, 2017). The Geneva Convention 1951 defines a refugee as someone who has a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, and is outside their country unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to return to it (UNHCR, 2025). Refugees are entitled to certain rights enshrined in international law such as the right to non-refoulement, non-discrimination and most importantly, the right to cross through irregular means without punishment (UNHCR, 2025).

Narratives surrounding displacement are influenced by broader ideological, political and security concerns and often portray marginalised groups as threats (Loescher, 2002). In the UK, the arrival of refugees via small-boats has become a focal point of political and media discourse (Parker et al., 2021). This movement is often framed as a ‘crisis’, evoking nationalist sentiments, moral panics and spreading damaging rhetoric. The UK’s small-boat crisis has been a significant issue since around 2018, though irregular crossings have been happening for much longer through other means (UK Government, 2023). After the 2015 European Migrant crisis, the influx of refugees and migrants to Europe reached significant levels, consequently dominating media headlines and prompting intense political discourse (Spindler, 2015).

A focus on the link between refugees and national security has been heightened by governments’ repeated scapegoating of refugees following terror attacks (Klein, 2021). The conflation of refugees with Muslims has become more apparent, specifically after the 2015 and 2016 Paris terror attacks (Hewitt, 2015). There has been a backlash against refugees amid fears of Islamist terrorists exploiting refugee channels to enter Europe, as well as an upsurge in a populist nationalism and anti-Muslim hostility following recent UK terror attacks (Abbas, 2020).

A key example is Nigel Farage stating that ‘UK Mediterranean boats will bring 500,000 Islamic State terrorists to Europe’ (Barnett, 2015). This characterisation intertwining refugees and Muslims conflates the Muslim refugee with a terror suspect, and therefore is undeserving of UK support (Abbas, 2020). Bull, Weinberg, and Coen (2024) analysed five speeches delivered by Farage at annual UKIP conferences between 2010 and 2015 and found that the then UKIP leader exemplified and illustrated populist discourse targeting migrants and refugees. Langlois (2024) found that Farage’s rhetoric was based on a nationalist populist campaign that aimed to create a culture war during and post Brexit. It resurrected an ‘existential threat’ of migrant groups taking over and replacing native groups, which Langlois named ‘cultural engulfment.’

In 2024, 36,816 people were detected making the journey across the English Channel. The highest figures were in 2022 when 45,755 people arrived through irregular means (BBC News, 2025). Despite sounding a considerable number, this equates to 0.05% of the UK population (Office for National Statistics, 2024).

Theoretical Framework: ‘Otherness’ and Securitisation

Scholarship on migration and refugees has explored the processes through which displaced populations are othered. It often draws from the work of Edward Said in Orientalism (1978), which explains how refugees are an ‘outgroup’ and are viewed as inferior to the dominant Western ideals. People from the ‘East’ and those from Islamic cultures are perceived as being drastically different from the West in both culture and mindset. Said asserts the tendency of Westerners to explain every facet of Eastern/Muslim societies in light of the Muslim religion, as if there were no other reality or influence on these societies but Islam (Akram, 2000). The conflation of the East with Islam correlates with the perceived interconnectedness of refugees and Islam, ignoring cultural differences and the unique, varied experiences of refugees from across the globe.

Frantz Fanon (1952) further builds on this idea of the other through his exploration of how the colonised subject is stripped of agency, constructed as an ‘other’ and frequently dehumanised. Fanon’s notion of the colonial other provides a critical lens for understanding how refugees are racialised, marginalised and politicised in society. Policies of deterrence, deportation and deportation can be seen as forms of Fanon’s ‘colonial project,’ whereby border force practices reinforce colonial histories and create hierarchical race divides at a neo-colonial border (McNeill, 2023).

Furthermore, Bauman (1995) discusses the idea of ‘the stranger’ in modern society and highlights how refugees impact the ideas of a nation-state. National identity is reinforced by defining migrants and refugees as external ‘others’ (Doty, 1996). Political discourse constructs migrants and refugees as existential threats to Western societies (Wodak, 2015), thus justifying the exclusionary and so-called ‘protection’ policies put in place.

The framing of refugees as a security threat has become more apparent after the events of 9/11. The legislative landscape has been characterised by increasing securitisation, which conceives asylum and migration movements as security threats (Sáenz-Pérez, 2023). According to securitisation theory, political issues are constituted as extreme security issues when they have been labelled as ‘dangerous’ or ‘threatening’ by a ‘securitising actor’ who has the social and institutional power to move the issue ‘beyond politics’ (Eroukhmanoff, 2018). Security issues are not fixed notions; they are constructed and acted upon by governments when they are either an objective threat or a perceived threat.

Gagnon’s (1994) work on Ethnonationalism in Serbia can be helpful to understand how manufactured threats can play a key role in electoral politics. Gagnon (1994) argues that the ruling elites provoke tension along ethnic lines and employ a narrative which portrays certain groups as threats to the state. This allows them to position themselves as protectors of the state, ensuring electoral support. The malleable nature of political narratives mean that crises can be manufactured to aid ideological aims and broader interests, such as Europe’s wide scale scapegoating of migrants and refugees (Delapre, 2024).

Political Narratives and Framing of the Small-boat ‘Crisis’

The political sphere upholds several narratives and notions about refugees, which vary in accuracy and accountability. Mainstream media coverage tends to frame refugees as a collective ‘other’, perpetuating narratives that silence and marginalise those being discussed (Kumar and Hooda, 2024). Individuals seeking refuge in Britain have been called meaningless and derogatory terms such as ‘illegal refugee’ and ‘asylum cheat’ (Kundnani, 2003). The terms ‘immigrant’ and ‘asylum seeker’ are synonymous in the eyes of the public rather than as distinct terms to accurately convey the status and situation of individuals (Kundnani, 2003). The media has wielded significant power in shaping public opinion using this rhetoric and defining political discourse; showing an undeniable link in the mainstream media and UK politics (Rahi, 2024).

Through a mixed method approach combining corpus analysis, media analysis, and political discourse analysis, Piemontese (2025) explains how political discourse creates a false binary of good versus bad migrants. They state that the figure of the ‘illegal migrant’ serves as a strategic counter-image to ‘legal’ and ‘skilled’ migrant workers. The report also demonstrates how the politics of ‘deservingness and desirability’ are constructed and contested across media, politics, and civil society (Piemontese, 2025). This report provides a comprehensive analysis of refugee discourse but could use more critical approaches to challenge these state-centred issues.

Many narratives portrayed in political discourse are based upon the spectacularisation of small-boats, whereby politicians conduct the performance of crisis and the mobilisation of moral panics to call for ‘sovereign hard-hitting action’ (Dobbernack, 2025). In the Stop the Boats campaigns, Suella Braverman and the Conservative party produced significant social visibility of the small-boat issue. They mobilised resentment by utilising crisis performances, while portraying British ‘culture war’ politics and defending any criticism of the Illegal Migration Act as left-wing lunacy (Dobbernack, 2025). This article draws on statements on immigration policy by Sunak and Braverman and explores ninety-seven newspaper articles, demonstrating both a strong methodology and a unique exploration into manufactured performances of crisis and production of visibility.

Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 has become infamous and influential in UK politics, with its racist and divisive content continuing to inspire rhetoric today. Powell stated that continuous immigration would lead to violence and prejudice towards ‘native’ British citizens (Esteves, 2022). The speech was a warning that unchecked immigration would lead to a racial and cultural divide that could erupt in violence, a future that would descend into chaos and bloodshed. These ideas have remained pivotal in how both immigrants and refugees are viewed and treated. The sentiments have been echoed by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who stated that the UK risks becoming an ‘island of strangers’ (Syal, 2025). The Prime Minister was accused of pandering to the far-right and using their rhetoric, which often wages a culture war and creates social divides between ‘us and them’ (Duffy et al., 2021).

The rhetoric of security threats and integration concerns are often intertwined, positioning the refugee as both an outsider who must assimilate into British culture, while simultaneously framing them as threats who should not be welcomed (Gray and Franck, 2019). During the EU refugee crisis, the securitisation of migration relied on mutually reinforcing representations of the racialised, masculinised threat and the racialised, feminised vulnerability, both embedded within colonial modernity (Gray and Franck, 2019). With men making up 87% of small‑boat arrivals in the year ending March 2023 (Home Office, 2023), this gender imbalance amplifies the perceived masculinised threat and contributes to a more hostile environment toward male refugees. These contradictory narratives also appear in social policies, which simultaneously call for refugee integration while promoting deterrence, reflecting an ideological dilemma (Parker et al., 2021). As a result, refugees face conflicting expectations about how they should behave and integrate, leaving them in a no‑win situation.

Why Are Refugees Negatively Framed? The Purpose of ‘Othering’

Rather than a mere consequence of fear or ignorance, the negative framing of refugees operates as a strategic discursive tool that serves multiple functions. Divisive rhetoric can shape public opinion, reinforce existing power structures, and justify harsh policies, all in service of broader ideological agendas (Howard, 2021).

The relationship between political narratives and public opinion is a well-researched area. Political leaders shape the preferences of public opinion by proposing a political vision, relevant political goals and how they will perform better than others in leading policies achieving these ends (Capano, Galanti and Barbato, 2023). The primary goal of a political narrative is a political consensus; this ensures electoral support in the future. Stating that a host country is overwhelmed creates a scapegoating effect where refugees can detract from the real-world issues facing a state, such as economic turmoil and the mishandling of state institutions (Migrants’ Rights Network, 2025).

Gagnon (1994) states that ruling elites shift the debate around important social issues towards certain ethnic groups and implement the idea of an alleged threat to the masses, which reinforces their political power and reduces pressure on their power bases. Media reporting often exaggerates the scale of refugee arrivals, even though asylum applications have fallen to around half the number recorded in 2002 (Pickard-Whitehead, 2022). Britain exists in an ‘imaginary state of crisis’ about immigration; the Conservatives created a notion of a migrant siege whereby the UK is overrun, and they are the........

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