The politics of fear, and how to defeat it
Yesterday, the UK Labour Government published its ‘landmark’ Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill.
The UK Home Office said in a press release that the legislation introduces counter terror-style powers to “identify, disrupt and smash people smuggling gangs” – as if this is somehow the fix that our very broken immigration system needs.
For those of you who are not UK migration policy experts – which will be most of you, because this is a very niche sort of interest – this Bill will, categorically, not fix the most pressing issues in the immigration and asylum system.
Nor will it protect people from the harm they suffer when they are trafficked or smuggled to the UK because they are fleeing persecution and criminal gangs.
Nor will it (probably) even have any significant impact on disrupting smuggling gang activity, which is its stated aim.
It definitely will not improve the lives of people already living in the UK, or fix the damage caused by UK Conservative Government immigration policies:
💼 employers who cannot hire or retain qualified staff from abroad
🎓universities who are facing huge deficits because of the sudden drop in overseas student enrolment
🏠families and communities who are facing rising immigration fees and, in most part of the UK, what is described as “legal advice deserts” when it comes to accessing credible, affordable legal advice on their essential rights.
Why does migration matter to all of us? 🕊️🌎
Between 16-18% of the UK population was born abroad (ONS, 2023), and that means that a substantially greater proportion of the British public have family members – spouses, parents, children – or friends who are, in some way, directly impacted by UK immigration law and the “hostile environment”.
Even if you are British, the “hostile environment” enforcement powers exercisable by the UK Home Office, which have increased year-on-year in the last decade, affects every part of your daily life:
- When you started your job, did you have to show your passport or birth certificate to pass a ‘right to work’ check because your driver’s licence was not sufficient photographic ID? That’s immigration law.
- If you are a student at college or university, does your lecturer require you sign a register or use a QR code or “check-in” app to report to the Home Office physical attendance by students in class? That’s immigration law, too.
- When you opened a bank account, or applied for a driving licence, whether or not you realised it, your right to live in the UK was also determined as part of the application process.
Just as we all share the air we breathe, so too the hostile environment does not just affect migrants in the UK – it cannot, by definition – it affects all of us.
Why should we fix the asylum and immigration system and dismantle the hostile environment?
Quite a lot of research has been done over the past decade which has concluded:
- The Home Office has no evidence to show that hostile environment policies actually work
- Hostile environment policies were enforced illegally – in violation of the Equality Act 2010
- They foster racist practices, which is destructive for people and communities
- And – the obvious – hostile environment policies are cruel, harmful, unfair and bad for us
There are really important issues in the UK asylum and immigration that system that also need to be fixed. There is a massive backlog in deciding asylum claims, and this together with the Home Office’s decision to use hotels for asylum seekers rather than private rented flats has directly result in more than doubling the annual cost of housing a single person – from £17k to £41k, in just a couple of years.
Just to be clear, who gets paid also matters.
In this case, all that extra money – £4.3 billion annually – is going to just three private contractors, and trickling down to a small number of private hotel owners and chains. Instead, this money could go to local authorities, public housing associations and private landlords who previously supplied asylum seeker housing (and could do so again). Returning to what we did before could also expand the social housing stock and be part of the solution to the UK-wide and very real social housing crisis.
What we needed vs what we actually got
So for a brief summary of what the Bill actually says, I always turn to Colin Yeo at Free Movement for a definitive and accessible analysis of breaking legislation and case law. If you want the detail, you can read his article here.
✅ We did get repeal of the Rwanda Act and some particularly cruel parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023
❌ but other harmful and irrational parts of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 have been retained
❌ creation of new, wider enforcement powers for UK Home Office, including search and seizure of mobile phones
❌ creation of a whole lot of new offences, with serious penalties, and not a lot of explanation for why this was necessary
So, in conclusion, we needed serious solutions to the poor functioning of the immigration and asylum system in the UK and a commitment to dismantling the UK Conservative Government’s hostile immigration policies…
…and what we got was a UK Labour Government that has kept failed policies on the books, and created new powers and offences as well.
This Bill will not have any impact on protecting people from smuggling, or making us all safer, because it was not designed to do those things – it was designed to signal that the UK Labour Government is willing to engage in the politics of fear.
The politics of fear, and how to defeat it
The politics of fear as articulated by Ruth Wodak is a tactic, usually associated with the right-wing, that distorts the political reality of a nation in order to create a disproportionate fear in the general population that is disproportionate to the actual danger posed.
Politicians and political elites can then use this fear – once it becomes an accepted mainstream belief – as a pretext to pass laws and take actions that are harmful to the general public, but somehow in the name of the common good. Or to be seen to be “doing something” about the invented (or exaggerated) harm, when avoiding accountability for larger, actual failings of governance.
We are living in a global era of elected governments that embrace the politics of fear; what can we do about it?
✋🏽Don’t let other people define your fears – rely on your own wits, develop your ability to assess the credibility of others, and trust your native ability to reason through a problem. To know your own fears, the size and shape and finiteness of them, is a gift. And it’s a gift only you can give yourself.
🫱🏼🫲🏾Take actions to reduce fear in others – I’ve written before about the importance of curious and open dialogue with people who do not share your views, but I mean something different this time. The politics of fear will thrive when people feel insecure: about their financial situation, or even their place in this world – whether they belong, whether they deserve the respect of others, and so on. For me, initiatives that reduce poverty, improve access to education and employment, housing, health and social care – will increase feelings of safety and belonging, and reduce the effectiveness of politics of fear.
📣Call it out, and talk about the real change we need to see – the politics of fear is just a sleight of hand; it’s a particularly cruel kind of magic trick. It works because fear is a powerful motivator for people. But it also works because people don’t call it out. Try that, the next time you think people might be listening to you. And remember to be ready with your list of actual important things we should be talking about instead. Because if you do succeed, people will be listening. 😉
Good luck everyone! Thanks for reading The Long View this week and bearing with me, whilst I worked through what I clearly felt was a really disappointing Bill from the new UK Labour Government.
As a wee treat, here’s a short, sweet book recommendation: not for the faint-hearted, but very much a rallying cry for feminist activists to call out the politics of fear that persist in how we talk about women’s bodies … and having the courage to push for something radically different, and better.
First published on LinkedIn on 31 January 2025:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/politics-fear-how-defeat-jen-ang-qopre/
