The vile eastern European: ideology of deportability in the British media discourse
Abstract
Pre-Brexit media discourse in the UK focused extensively on the end of free movement, the governance of European mobility, and its relationship with state sovereignty. This article, methodologically anchored in Critical Discourse Analysis, discusses how the potential post-Brexit deportee, namely the ‘Vile Eastern European’, is depicted by the leading pro-Leave British press. The Vile Eastern European is juxtaposed with a minority of hard-working and tax-paying migrants from the continent, as well as with unjustly deported Windrush and Commonwealth migrants. As the newspapers explain, the UK has not been able to deport the Vile Eastern European because of the EU free movement rights. The press links the UK’s inability to remove the unwanted citizens of EU countries with its lack of sovereignty, suggesting that only new immigration regulations will permit this deportation and make the UK sovereign again. The article concludes that the media discourse reproduces and co-produces the UK ideology of deportability that has been the basis for the EU Settlement Scheme and new immigration regulations.Citation
Radziwinowiczówna, A. and Galasińska, A. (2021) The vile eastern European: ideology of deportability in the British media discourse. Central and Eastern European Migration Review, 10(1), pp. 75–93. DOI: 10.17467/ceemr.2021.01Journal
Central and Eastern European Migration ReviewAdditional Links
http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/articles/vile-eastern-european-ideology-deportability-brexit-media-discourseType
Journal articleLanguage
enDescription
© 2021 The Authors. Published by Centre of Migration Research, University of Warsaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: http://www.ceemr.uw.edu.pl/articles/vile-eastern-european-ideology-deportability-brexit-media-discourseISSN
2300-1682Sponsors
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 786490.ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.17467/ceemr.2021.01
Scopus Count
Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/