The narrative construction of migrant irregularity in the United Kingdom

This report investigates the narrative construction of migrant irregularity in the United Kingdom across three primary domains: media, politics, and civil society.

The research employs corpus analysis to examine word frequencies, semantic patterns, and narrative structures across texts samples from major UK newspapers, policy documents, and civil society publications. Covering the period between 2019 to 2023, the study provides insights into an era marked by significant global events, including the COVID-19 pandemic, the post-Brexit transition, and major changes in UK migration legislation.

Through a mixed-method approach that combines quantitative and qualitative analysis, the report comparatively examines how different stakeholders frame and influence public discourse on irregular migration, with particular attention to the intersection of employment, gender, race, and family-related representations.

In media discourse, the study identifies the tendency of liberal outlets to reinforce conservative narratives on irregular migration. This is particularly evident in their reproduction of the ‘small boat’ crossings spectacle, which has come to dominate public imagination and policy responses while overshadowing other pathways to irregularity.

Politics discourse analysis reveals how the figure of the ‘illegal migrant’ serves as a strategic counter-image to ‘legal’ and ‘skilled’ migrant workers, legitimising the creation of a post-Brexit migration regime. Through a false binary between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ migrants – built upon a deliberately constructed legality versus illegality dichotomy – this framing aims to disconnect migration and asylum governance from international legal standards, prioritising state-centric economic interests over human rights.

The analysis also reveals how civil society organisations, while attempting to counter dominant narratives, often remain constrained by the same discursive frameworks they seek to challenge. Their advocacy frequently relies on a dual narrative strategy, focusing on both economic contribution arguments that inadvertently reinforce neoliberal logics of deservingness, or on humanitarian approaches that can perpetuate patronising representations of migrant vulnerability.

More broadly, this report demonstrates how the politics of deservingness and desirability are constructed and contested across media, politics, and civil society, and shape interactions through various argumentative frameworks: fairness, fiscal responsibility, limited capacity, native supremacy, economic contribution, human rights, humanitarian considerations, post-colonial perspectives, and unapologetic stances.

The report concludes by advocating for a paradigm shift in migration discourse that moves beyond transactional approaches and crisis management, towards recognising migration as a natural and historical phenomenon. The findings have important implications for policy-making, public debate, and the discursive representation of irregularised migrants in the UK.