A hostile environment: language, race, politics and the media

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Six months on from riots where asylum accommodation, mosques and minority-owned businesses were systematically attacked by groups of far right supporters, a new Runnymede Trust report highlights the role that media and politicians play in fuelling this violence.

Our latest report, A hostile environment: language, race, politics and the media, the first of two reports analysing parliamentary and media debates from 2010-2024, shows how large sections of these debates encouraged widespread hostility to migrants. 

We show how the ‘hostile environment’ is not a new approach to immigration, but a continuation of a long history of racist, xenophobic immigration policies - designed to exclude people of colour.

It is a form of modern racism, designed to keep as many people of colour and ethnically minoritised people as possible out of the UK, without appearing to be racist. 

This first report covers the period 2010-2014, and shows that:

• The British media and politicians have played a key role in creating a culture in which racial discrimination is permissible. In parliamentary debates and media reporting, negative terms like “illegal”, “flood” and “influx” are persistently used in association with migrants, posing them as a threat, dangerous and outsiders. The word “illegal” is in the top five most strongly associated words with ‘migrant’. 
• Following Theresa May’s announcement in 2012 to “create a hostile environment for illegal immigrants”, media coverage containing hostile rhetoric around migration and migrants more than doubled (a 137% increase), compared to the two years prior. 
• Politicians and the media have pushed this racist narrative to cement the myth that migrants and migration is criminal, in order to justify harsh and discriminatory migration policies. Framing migrants as inherently ‘illegal’ is a key feature of the ‘hostile environment’ and subsequent immigration law.
• When migrants are defined as both illegal, and as ‘too many’/’an onslaught’, measures to expand the scope of immigration restrictions can be more easily accepted.
• A distinctive characteristic of the ‘hostile environment’ compared to former immigration law is that it ‘deputises’ ordinary citizens to act as immigration enforcers - from landlords and healthcare providers to teachers and colleagues. JCWI found that 42% of landlords are less likely to consider tenants without a British passport due to the Right to Rent requirements, and 27% are hesitant to engage with individuals who have ‘foreign accents or names’. Meanwhile, between 60-70% of employment raids target Bangladeshi-owned businesses.

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Politicians and the media cannot continue to deny their role in pushing harmful narratives. We urge them to take meaningful action to eliminate racist hate speech - among public figures and in the media - and we call on the government to end ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies once and for all.

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Dr Shabna Begum, CEO of the Runnymede Trust, said:

“The language around immigration and migrants has long been used to provide cover for racism by claiming it has nothing to do with ethnicity or race - simply numbers of people coming in. But it’s clear that ‘hostile environment’ immigration policies are racist, and this report provides a solid evidence base to make that claim. ‘Hostile environment’ policies are not new, but last summer’s racist riots are the undeniable outcome of normalised and intensifying racism, and must serve as a sharp reminder that these policies and the deep racism they invoke can have spectacularly violent consequences.

“The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal report revealed not only how historically embedded racism is into our immigration legislation, but the lengths to which recent governments have gone to deny and suppress that conclusion. We are at a crucial moment, both domestically and internationally, where racist far-right narratives are threatening to dominate and erode our rights and democracy. Where migrants are dehumanised and scapegoated in ways that foment nothing but resentment and hate. We can no longer deny how racist these political discussions have become, and the trajectory that leads us toward, unless we put a sharp stop to it, now.”