By Hannah Jones , Yasmin Gunaratnam , Gargi Bhattacharyya , William Davies , Sukhwant Dhaliwal , Kirsten Forkert , Emma Jackson and Roiyah Saltus

The 2013 Go Home vans marked a turning point in government-sponsored communication designed to demonstrate control and toughness on immigration. In this study, the authors explore the effects of this toughness: on policy, public debate, pro-migrant and anti-racist activism, and on the everyday lives of people in Britain. Bringing together an authorial team of eight respected social researchers, alongside the voices of community organisations, policy makers, migrants and citizens, and with an afterword by journalist Kiri Kankhwende, this is an important intervention in one of the most heated social issues of our time."

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2017. 204p.

By Manlio Cinalli, Hans-Jörg Trenz, Verena K. Brändle, Olga Eisele and Christian Lahusen

This book examines the ‘European refugee crisis’, offering an in-depth comparative analysis of how public attitudes towards refugees and humanitarian dispositions are shaped by political news coverage.

An international team of authors address the role of the media in contesting solidarity towards refugees from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Focusing on the public sphere, the book follows the assumption that solidarity is a social value, political concept and legal principle that is discursively constructed in public contentions. The analysis refers systematically and comparatively to eight European countries, namely, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Treatment of data is also original in the way it deals with variations of public spheres by combining a news media claims-making analysis with a social media reception analysis. In particular, the book highlights the prominent role of the mass media in shaping national and transnational solidarity, while exploring the readiness of the mass media to extend thick conceptions of solidarity to non-members. It proposes a research design for the comparative analysis of online news reception and considers the innovative potential of this method in relation to established public opinion research.

The book is of particular interest for scholars who are interested in the fields of European solidarity, migration and refugees, contentious politics, while providing an approach that talks to scholars of journalism and political communication studies, as well as digital journalism and online news reception.

London; New York: Routledge, 2021. 220p.

By Rakib Ehsan

This paper argues that the ongoing small-boats emergency on the English south coast involves two injustices – a dysfunctional asylum system which is overburdened as a result of illegal unauthorised migration and increasingly leaves some of the world’s most persecuted peoples by the wayside, along with the unfairness of the UK’s most deprived local authorities disproportionately bearing the load of accommodating such arrivals. The report issues a stark warning over the mounting costs of the small-boats emergency and the risk of it fuelling public resentment – especially in post-industrial areas and left-behind coastal towns. The mid-estimate of hotel accommodation alone – at £2.2bn – exceeds the entirety of the Government funding allocated for Round 2 of the Levelling Up Fund (£2.1 billion) and is three and a half times the £630 million government investment to tackle homelessness in the UK.Recommendations include the introduction of an annual cap on refugees which is democratically determined by the UK Parliament and prioritises women and children in conflict-affected territories and insecure displacement camps. The report also calls for the curbing of the power of judicial interventions – both foreign and domestic – which is thwarting the UK Government’s efforts to tackle the small-boats emergency.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 58p.

By Tom K. Wong

To better understand the attitudes and preferences that border residents have on border policies, the U.S. Immigration Policy Center (USIPC) at UC San Diego surveyed 2,750 voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas. The survey was fielded from October 8 to October 22. The margin of error is +/- 2.1%. For more, see methodology section. The data show that the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas—disapprove of the way that the president is handling issues at the U.S.-Mexico border. The results also reveal a general lack of trust in the Border Patrol agency, which includes: lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will protect the rights and civil liberties of all people; lack of trust that Border Patrol officials will keep border residents safe; and lack of trust that Border Patrol officials who abuse their authority will be held accountable for their abuses. Moreover, registered voters in the southwestern border states generally prefer policies opposite to those of the current administration.

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  These policies include: alternatives to detention for families seeking refuge in the U.S.; placing unaccompanied minors caught attempting to cross the border illegally into the care of child welfare specialists, not border or immigration enforcement officials; providing aid to migrants in distress (e.g., food and water) rather than criminally prosecuting those who provide aid to migrants in distress; investing more in making ports of entry more efficient rather than spending more on border security; and admitting asylum seekers into the U.S. in order to ensure their safety rather than making asylum seekers wait in Mexico. When it comes to spending, whereas the majority of registered voters across the four southwestern border states oppose additional federal spending on border walls and fencing, the results are mixed when it comes to additional federal spending on hiring more Border Patrol agents. Lastly, the results show that just over 3 out of 10 have been stopped and questioned about their citizenship status at an interior border checkpoint.

La Jolla, CA: U.S. Immigration Policy Center, UC San Diego, 2019. 23p.