White Saviours versus White Borders: Constructions of Race in the Visual Representations of Refugees in UK Newspapers 

Guest post by Hannah Ryan. Hannah Ryan is a Teaching Fellow at the Birmingham International Academy, University of Birmingham. Her research explores the visual portrayal of refugees and asylum seekers in British newspapers, drawing on an intersectional framework which examines the impact of gender, race, religion, and age on visual representation. 

August 2024 saw a fresh wave of Islamophobic and anti-immigrant violence by the far-right. The cause of this violence was the murder of young girls in Southport and the media disinformation about the perpetrator which spread quickly online. The disinformation stated that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker, information which was quickly discredited but not before it had spread to far-right circles throughout the UK who responded with brutality, targeting mosques and hotels housing asylum seekers. The perpetrator in fact was British-born and had no links to Islam, however as Nilufar Ahmed explains, the othering of those seen as non-white means that because the perpetrator was a black male, he was incorrectly represented as not belonging to Britain. 

The media, both social and mainstream, play a vital role in this othering. For much of the British public, the media remains the main information source on issues around migration, particularly for those who have little actual contact with migrant groups. While social media is becoming more prevalent, a recent report from Ofcom shows that people still consider mass media as more accurate and trustworthy. Furthermore, newspaper outlets have moved their distribution online to shift with the social media trend. However, the mass media’s representations aren’t neutral; they produce news stories that reflect what Hall calls the “dominant cultural order.” Further to this, because the mass media is focused on profit-making, stories are also often sensationalised and emotionally charged to grab the audience’s attention. As Moeller argues, ‘a “big bang” – trumps almost all other kinds of news.’ 

For newspaper representations of refugees, they depict a particular racialised stance focused on othering refugees of colour, and particularly Muslim refugees, as different and inferior to the majority white community. For Mayblin, this process of  othering is a continuation of white supremacy and racialised hierarchy that has existed since the period of slavery and European empires. Importantly, not all groups are othered in the same way.  

For my PhD, I conducted research which explored the visual representation of refugees in the UK newspaper media between 2018 and 2020. During this period, the vast majority of refugees were represented as Middle Eastern or black African. While the majority of them were photographed alone, the non-refugees that were at times included in the photographs were predominantly white. Through this research I found that refugees and non-refugees were presented together in two starkly different ways, with gender and proximity key to these representations. 

Firstly, when refugees are photographed at a distance from the UK, they are represented as innocent victims. The focus is consistently on women and children who are seen as genuine, vulnerable and passive and are often photographed in refugee camps far away from Europe. In these instances, the non-refugees they are photographed with are white celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, who are represented as white saviours. While the refugees are kept silent, the celebrities are photographed speaking on their behalf. In this way, white western celebrities and the aid organisations that they often represent decide what the silenced refugees need, rather than letting them decide for themselves. What the focus often ends up being about is intervening ‘over there’ rather than ‘over here’ with both the historical and current role of western governments in the Middle East and Africa erased from the conversation, and those seeking asylum are kept at a distance (see work by Bell). This is nothing new. As Spivak argues, the white saviour of the twenty-first century echoes the notion of white colonialists saving brown women from brown men during the height of the European empires and was used to justify horrific levels of violence in the colonies. More recently, the US and allies ‘War on Terror’ consistently used the same rhetoric as part of their justification, despite the fact that this led to physical and structural harm to women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In contrast, when refugees are focused in proximity to the UK, there is a shift from the innocent women and children of colour to the dangerous men of colour. While the white saviour trope focuses on protecting genuine refugees, when they are shown in proximity the focus becomes on protecting the UK from ‘bogus’ asylum seekers. The white celebrity shifts to the white border guard and the refugee moves from passive and vulnerable to active and threatening (see work by  King). Again, the threat of people of colour moving towards the western world and the need for white borders has been prominent since the period of decolonisation, particularly post world-war two. Far-right political parties and movements such as the British National Party and the English Defence League have been formed to spread anti-immigrant, and particularly, anti-Muslim rhetoric, constantly arguing for the need to “defend ‘our’ country, way of life and culture from threatening enemy others.” This rhetoric isn’t just spread by the far-right but, as Chris Allen explains, but by mainstream political parties too. The need to ‘defend’ from the threatening other was an important factor in the Leave campaign’s argument during Brexit. The unveiling of the UKIP Breaking Point poster being one of the most memorable moments from the referendum, alongside the tragic murder of pro-migrant MP Jo Cox by far-right extremist Thomas Mair. 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that white refugees are not subject to the othering that refugees of colour face. For example, Martikainen and Sakki’s study into Finnish newspapers found that Ukrainians were humanised as innocent but also as resilient. Meanwhile, Morini and Hudson’s survey with members of the British public found that respondents were much more welcoming of Ukrainian refugees than Afghan refugees. The racialised othering of refugees of colour in the western media is a continuation of the colonial tropes that have had devastating consequences for people of colour for centuries. The aftermath of the far-right riots has led to calls for the media to become more accountable in the consequences of their reporting. The media consistently other refugees of colour, either through the white saviour trope when they are seen at a distance or the white border trope when they are seen as coming into proximity with the UK. These colonial tropes need to be challenged and the links between the actions of Britain, both during the colonial period and more recently, and the movement of refugees of colour today must be acknowledged.  

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