The ‘Threat’ of “Channel Migrants”: An Exploration into How the UK Media Portrayed People Claiming Asylum

This paper explores how print media in the UK portrayed so-called “channel migrants” during a two-year period preceding a pivotal moment in UK asylum history, where national policy and practice became increasingly exclusionary. This study adopts a corpus linguistics approach to examine the language associated with people on the move in 741 press articles. The findings show during 01/05/19 - 30/04/21 “channel migrants” were predominantly portrayed as ‘a threat’ in newspapers, with some nuance depending on the publication type and terminology used to refer to people on the move. Where possible, findings are disaggregated by gender, showing significant discrepancies between the media framing of female and male “channel migrants”. Finally, this paper offers reflections on a potential relationship between media portrayal and policymaking in the asylum context.