How media, politicians, and civil society shapes public conversation on irregular migration

New research by the University of Birmingham examines how irregular migration is framed across media, politics, and civil society in the United Kingdom.

The Narrative Construction of Migrant Irregularity in the United Kingdom: Representation and Narratives in Media, Politics, and Civil Society provides a comprehensive analysis of how different stakeholders influence public discourse on migration and shape policies that impact migrants' rights and experiences.

The research has found that public narratives and discourse are focussed on dehumanising figures, small boat crossings even though they count for a minority of arrivals, the reproduction of and restraint of government rhetoric and political messaging.

The study is based on an extensive corpus analysis of texts published between 2019 and 2023 including: 5,987 media articles from major UK newspapers (The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Mirror); 218 political documents, including parliamentary debates, ministerial statements, and party manifestos, and 611 civil society texts, including reports, press releases, and written evidence submitted to UK parliamentary committees by NGOs, advocacy groups, and migration-focused research bodies.

Quantification fuels a crisis narrative and dehumanizes migrants, particularly men

Migration discourse in media and politics is dominated by numbers—statistics on small boat crossings, asylum applications, and deportations are repeatedly used to frame migration as an overwhelming crisis.

Dr Stefano Piemontese, from the University of Birmingham and the author of the report, explained: “This numerical fixation does not only strip away the human realities of migration, reducing people to mere items in logistics processes of crossings and deportations. It also creates an illusion of measurability and control in public opinion, especially for a phenomenon long framed as requiring increased regulation, providing anti-immigration rhetoric with benchmarks against which political promises can be measured.”

The research found that the focus on quantification is particularly evident in the portrayal of migrant men, who are often constructed as faceless masses, reinforcing stereotypes of young, single, racialized men as potential security threats and women as vulnerable mothers or victims of trafficking.

Irregular boat crossings dominate the discourse, despite accounting for a minority of new arrivals

Media and political narratives overwhelmingly focus on small boat crossings in the English Channel, despite the fact that most irregular migrants in the UK do not arrive this way. Irregularity is more often the result of visa overstays, bureaucratic hurdles, or changes in immigration policy—factors that receive far less attention. This disproportionate emphasis on boat arrivals fuels a sense of crisis and emergency, allowing governments to justify restrictive policies like offshore detention and deportations while neglecting the structural causes of irregular migration.

Professor Nando Sigona, Chair of International Migration and Forced Displacement at the University of Birmingham and coordinator of the I-CLAIM study, Said: “By framing migration primarily as an issue of border enforcement, the debate is skewed toward security concerns rather than addressing migrants’ rights, contributions, and long-term integration.”

Dr Piemontese added: “Political and media narratives oscillate between portraying irregular migrants as criminals and as victims of smuggling networks. This dual framing enables governments to position themselves as both tough on migration and humanitarian in their interventions—particularly through deterrence-based policies like deportations and offshore processing.”

Media narratives and the impact of political framings of irregular migration

The research found that even left-leaning and liberal media outlets often reproduce government rhetoric, emphasizing enforcement and control over migrants’ rights or structural causes of irregularity. Small boat crossings dominate the discourse, overshadowing other common pathways into irregularity, such as visa overstays and bureaucratic barriers.

The researchers also argue that political discourse instrumentalizes ‘illegal migration’ to justify restrictive policies. Political discourse strategically constructs irregular migrants as a distinct category—separate from ‘legal’ or ‘skilled’ migrants—through interconnected frameworks of deservingness and desirability. This dual rhetorical structure positions ‘illegal migrants’ as both morally suspect and economically undesirable, enabling policymakers to reframe migration as problematic despite economic dependencies on foreign labour.

Conservative narratives particularly combine restrictive measures with selective openness to ‘desirable’ workers, using the image of 'illegal migrants' to justify deterrence policies (such as deportations and visa restrictions) while simultaneously protecting 'skilled migrants' from anti-immigration sentiment. This framework also serves to undermine asylum rights by conflating refugees with ‘illegal migrants’ and criminals. It shifts public compassion away through a supposedly fair approach that weaponizes perceptions of antisocial behaviours by 'illegal migrants' to justify restricting fundamental rights for all migrants.

Civil society advocacy remains constrained by state-centred logic

Civil society organisations and advocacy groups are not immune to this overwhelming discourse either. While organisations highlight the rights and contributions of irregular migrants, their narratives often respond to government and media framings rather than setting their own agenda. Economic and humanitarian arguments dominate, but they do not fundamentally challenge state-driven notions of ‘deservingness.’

Professor Sigona concluded: “Our report highlights the need to move beyond simplistic and transactional justifications for migration. Rather than treating irregular migration as a ‘problem to be solved,’ we suggest a shift toward narratives that acknowledge migration as a natural and historical phenomenon—one that requires a human-centred and rights-based approach rather than an exclusive focus on enforcement.”