Crisis by Design? How Politics Influences Humanitarian Action

An exploration of how political narrative shapes humanitarian responses to migration, examining historical contexts, policy implications, and the role of NGOs.

Introduction

Exploring how much politics shapes humanitarian action is important because it centres the complex dynamics underlying humanitarian crises. Crises’ urgency often masks these factors so reflecting on political causes can explain what has led to the need for humanitarian action. Such critical analysis can also help articulate the scope of humanitarian action and the factors that shape it.

Political analysis takes many forms, such as exploration of power dynamics, political systems, international relations, and analysis of governments. In this essay, I will be focusing on the politics of narrative. I am choosing this perspective because I would like to explore how the power of political narrative relies upon and reinforces a specific framing of humanitarian issues. Political narrative is often an intentional effort by powerful elites to steer public opinion for their own gain. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is one form of inquiry which helps to critically assess and interpret how particular discourses establish and sustain social inequity (Wodak & Meyer 2009). Carol Bacchi's 'What's the Problem Represented to be? (WPR - 2012) approach provides a method of critically analysing government policy. The proposed 'solutions' highlight the underlying beliefs and assumptions about what is deemed to be problematic and must change. It also asks how such framing originated, what factors are implicitly deemed to be 'unproblematic' and the impact of particular representations. Some of the implications of political narrative for humanitarian action is that it determines a state's policy and, thereby, statutory provisions. By establishing what the state will or will not do or provide, there will always be de facto gaps in provision for people in need. These statutory boundaries may either augment or create humanitarian crises. Humanitarian actors then undertake interventions in response to such crises and so, the type and scale of humanitarian response are largely dictated by political factors.

I will use the case of the UK government's statutory response to irregular migrants in the UK to illustrate these dynamics, exploring how humanitarian action in support of irregular migrants is shaped by politics. NGOs and civil society in the UK seek to 'fill the gap', providing services and assistance which are actively withheld by the government from irregular migrants. This means that the kinds of activities undertaken by humanitarians are determined by the intentional lack of statutory provision. In this way, the UK government creates and perpetuates the need of irregular migrants, leading humanitarian agencies to respond accordingly to meet those needs. This particular case helps reflect on the question of how politics shapes humanitarian action by revealing the hidden dynamics and motivations which lead to the urgent needs of irregular migrants in the UK. These often-invisible factors establish the context within which humanitarians identify human need and seek to meet it. I will firstly look at the origin and development of UK political narrative on irregular migration over time. Then I will explore the implications of political narrative on policy and humanitarian action before analysing humanitarian action through the lens of political narrative.

The development of political narrative

At the core of the evolving political narrative on irregular migration is preventing 'undesirable' people from travelling to and remaining in the UK. Whilst the definition of who is 'undesirable' and who determines such definitions has varied over time, this has always been steeped in political dynamics and power imbalances favouring elites.

The 'Aliens' Acts of the early 1900s limited the number of poor, Jewish people coming to the UK and ingrained social inequity for migrants by significantly restricting their rights (Goodfellow 2019). As MPs protested the arrival of Caribbean British citizens, the 1948 Nationality Act ensured white 'old Commonwealth' residents could freely migrate to the UK. The 1960s' and 1970s' immigration acts imposed racialised immigration controls on Commonwealth citizens through employment and ancestry requirements which prioritised white migrants (Goodfellow 2019). National Front (NF) membership surged as public discourse revealed immigration had become symbolic of Britain's fall from global supremacy (Whipple 2009). During the 'Winter of Discontent', future prime minister Margaret Thatcher spoke of being 'swamped', weaponising anti-migrant hostility and wooing NF members (Goodfellow 2019). The 1981 British Nationality Act removed automatic citizenship for those born in the UK and fines were introduced for transporting irregular migrants. The 1990s saw the introduction of employment immigration checks and a dramatic increase in the use of detention. Government rhetoric about 'bogus' asylum seekers and migrants 'abusing the system' fueled anti-immigrant narratives. Affordable flights contributed to an increase of more than 33 times the number of UK asylum applications between 1980 and the early 2000s, predominantly from the Global South (Goodfellow 2019). Following 9/11, the securitisation of immigration accelerated. 2005 General Election campaigns described dangerous 'criminal' migrants threatening communities (Ibrahim & Howarth 2018). Asylum policies became increasingly restrictive (Schuster and Bloch 2005) whilst immigration policies were eased for economic gain. Precaritised 'low' migration scheme migrants became a hyper-exploitable workforce (De Genova 2002), benefitting the state. The government massively underestimated migration to the UK from EU accession countries, adding to growing public concern about immigration. All the while, BNP and UKIP support increased. Labour's 2010 election manifesto implicitly criminalised migrants, outlining further immigration controls. Meanwhile, UKIP became the third-largest party in the UK. Whilst claiming to defend them from 'foreigners', David Cameron ideologically targeted welfare and public services with austerity policies (Clarke and Newman 2012). 2016's EU referendum then saw immigration conflated with the devastating effects of austerity policies. Immigrants were framed as piling unsustainable pressure on severely underfunded public services, utilising the classic narrative of 'austerity, scarcity and undeserving migrants' (Tuckett 2017). Desperate attempts to cling to power led the Tory party to try to recoup defecting voters from UKIP by appearing 'tough on immigration' (Evans and Mellon 2019). This led to the 'hostile environment' policies which introduced everyday bordering practices into housing, health, education, policing and banking. In the wake of international crises and self-imposed economic shocks, the Conservative government continue apace with anti-immigrant rhetoric, formalised through the Nationality and Borders Bill and the Illegal Migration Bill. Although Channel crossings have dominated recent immigration discourse, the vast majority of irregular migrants continue to arrive via legal routes (Triandafyllidou 2016, Home Office 2022).

As the above timeline illustrates, the problematisation of migrants is a longstanding theme in British politics. Historical and contemporary attempts to divert attention away from the political causes of post-imperial decline and state weakness in the face of international crises have led powerful elites to blame migrants (Goodfellow 2019). Centring migrants as the cause of domestic strife manufactures the 'illegality' of migration (Carmel, Lenner & Regine 2021). The securitisation of the UK's immigration and asylum agenda plays to populist views for political gain whilst delegitimising refugees and migrants. They are portrayed as inherently untrustworthy, in pursuit of selfish gain and an implicit threat to the UK's economic security and culture.

The implications of political narrative

Having examined how political narrative has developed over time, I will now discuss the effects of narrative. Political narrative has dictated the limits of government provision for irregular migrants, defining which human needs are left unmet by the state. Humanitarian agencies then rally to support irregular migrants and in this way, political narrative directly correlates to required humanitarian interventions. Political narrative around irregular migration has meant that statutory responses are explicitly restrictive, severely limiting people's access to food, accommodation, and health & social care. Given very limited statutory eligibility for basic services and few options for real progress, there are some hard limits as to what can be achieved by practical humanitarian action without systemic change. Such a restrictive context for humanitarian work can reduce job satisfaction for humanitarian workers and accelerates burnout, undermining hope for positive change and resilience to persevere (Guhan and Liebling-Kalifani 2011). The UK government's increasingly toxic, anti-immigrant rhetoric leads to increased hate crime (Devine 2021) and stirs up hostility and everyday discrimination towards irregular migrants from public service providers. These systemic and bureaucratic barriers exacerbate the need for advocacy and humanitarian assistance increasing irregular migrants' dependency on humanitarian organisations, making their service provision even more crucial. The ability of humanitarian organisations to sustain such important services for irregular migrants is threatened by a confusing discourse around the illegalisation (and implied criminality) of both the migrants themselves and the humanitarian action which supports them (Tazzioli and Walters 2019).

Humanitarian response to the needs of irregular migrants in the UK takes various forms; subsistence, advocacy, psychosocial and lobbying. NGOs may provide food, clothing and money to meet the basic needs of irregular migrants who are otherwise destitute. Some humanitarian organisations provide advocacy and casework for irregular migrants to help them access statutory provision which (despite their eligibility) remains inaccessible without additional support. Many faith groups and community groups provide informal psychosocial support to irregular migrants, including social drop-ins, befriending and integration activities such as English conversation clubs. Humanitarian response may also include various methods of lobbying or activism centred on securing justice and systemic change for irregular migrants, ranging from quiet diplomacy to protest and solidarity movements. There have also been some limited cross-sector partnerships to support irregular migrants to resolve their immigration status with promising results. The government should continue to invest in collaborations with the voluntary sector to engage irregular migrants in person-centred and pragmatic conversations about their future (UNHCR 2022, Ben & Jerrys 2022).

Humanitarianism and political narrative analysis

Now that I have explored the impacts of political narrative I will highlight the insights brought by political narrative analysis. Through this lens, we can interrogate the complex dynamics underlying human need and humanitarian action. Without this lens, we might interpret humanitarian responses to irregular migrants as a simple provision of basic needs for those in crisis. To do so would miss that framing migration as illegal has multiple origins and serves myriad purposes for powerful elites.

Not least of these causes is Britain's colonial past. The lasting effects of colonialism are still felt in the UK's political narrative on immigration through persistent racialised inequalities which produce and are reinforced by anti-immigrant rhetoric (De Genova 2010). These 'racialised hierarchies' follow colonial history, and, as most irregular migrants come from 'undesirable' post-colonial, non-European countries, racism is key to UK immigration policy. These 'undesirables' are dehumanised through colonial discourse (Mayblin 2017) and dehistoricised by the purposeful 'othering' of government rhetoric (Utych 2018). Such framing makes migrants more 'manageable' for the state whilst further masking the law's role in manufacturing and sustaining 'illegality' (Malkki 1996, De Genova 2013). Successive governments' policies of illegalisation have differentiated wanted from unwanted migrants through 'racialised processes of precaritisation' (Duvell 2006). Simplistic slogans about 'taking back control' of British borders render our complex colonial history invisible (Koram and Niancolu 2017). Centuries of British rule and propaganda in other nations have unsurprisingly encouraged many people to travel to the 'mother country' only to leave them destitute through racist policies (Jouhl 1961, Bailkin 2012).

Political narrative analysis on irregular migration also highlights how successive governments have scapegoated migrants for domestic unrest rather than tackling the real causes (such as a housing crisis created by chronic underinvestment, the decimation of public services by ideological austerity policies, and a failing economy exacerbated by egocentric power struggles). De Genova (2013) described this form of political narrative as a performative 'Border Spectacle', conjuring an imagined 'border crisis' at a nation's physical boundaries. The fetishised image of relentless border 'invasion' by irregular migrants is then used to justify the state's expansive invasion of civil liberties and proliferation of border enforcement in everyday life (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018). The purpose of such a spectacle is to establish the illegality of migrants as an objective, unquestionable fact. This causes the immigration laws which produce migrant illegality (and therefore the political priorities driving these) to be rendered invisible (De Genova 2002, 2005).

Conclusion

In this essay, I have examined the ways in which humanitarian action is shaped by politics. I have discussed how political narrative determines the limits of state provision and how the state's unwillingness to meet certain human needs then determines which needs are left unmet. Humanitarians identify unmet needs and by way of response, seek to provide what is lacking. The illustrative case of the UK government's statutory response to irregular migrants helps highlight the many complex dynamics leading to immigration policy formation. The case demonstrates how policy is generated from (and part of) political narrative, shaping a migrant 'crisis' to which humanitarian organisations feel compelled to respond. The resulting humanitarian action on behalf of irregular migrants is not then simply the response of human kindness to human crisis but is triggered by often-invisible political pressures and priorities.

In this essay, I have not explored how the actions and credibility of NGOs may be strengthened or weakened by funding from and collaboration with government. It would also be interesting to explore whether there is any incentive for NGOs' complicity in perpetuating the status quo given their raison d'etre. Or whether NGO activism and lobbying may sometimes be performative.

Regardless of the drivers of humanitarian action, political narrative analysis reveals how crucial strategic advocacy for system change is. If humanitarians blindly focus solely on providing basic services then the headwinds of politics will continue to dictate their activities.

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