Bad News for Refugees
In my commentary on The Sunday Times of Malta of tomorrow (October 13, 2013) I briefly commented on the book ‘Bad News for Refugees’ just published by Pluto Press. The authors, Greg Philo, Emma Briant and Pauline Donald who form part of the Glasgow Media Group, did a great piece of meticulous research analysing the political economic and environmental contexts of migration and looks specifically at how refugees and asylum seekers have been stigmatised in political rhetoric and in media coverage in Great Britain.
I will not repeat here what I will be writing in The Sunday Times of Malta but I will discuss other aspects of the book since it has relevance to us in Malta since over here, as in Great Britain, refugees are stigmatised if not also criminalised. Prof James Curran, a well-known British media scholar, described the book as enormously important. In his book Media and Democracy (2011) Curran had studied the media coverage of refugees and pointed out to examples in which the tabloid press ran a number of false and exaggerated stories. Philo et al give us more such examples which should make the British tabloids hung their heads in shame.
A point of particular relevance to the local situation is the reference the book makes to a number of myths mentioned in Alia and Bull’s Media and Ethnic Minorities (2005). These are the:
* Ineligibility myth: the assumption that most asylum seekers are not in fact ‘genuine’ and that their motives are economic.
* Cost myth: emphasises refugees as a financial burden.
* Social cost myth: stress the cultural harm which refugees are supposed to do to the British way of life, and the
* Criminality myth: asylum seekers are criminals or terrorists.
As they say: tutto l mondo e un paese. The same myths abound among us. I will only comment on a couple of these and add one of my own for good measures. I call this the ‘they are taking us over myth.’ This results from the belief –debunked over and over again by statistics – that the number of asylum seekers in Malta is overwhelming. This myth has been inflated so much that many find it hard to believe that that their number is between 3,000 and 5,000.
The same applies to the criminality myth. Statistics would also prove that this is not true. Two factors contribute for the dissemination of this myth. These are some alarmist press reports and the insistence by some (unfortunately also Prime Minister) to refer to asylum seekers as ‘illegal immigrants’. The use of this term is misleading and offensive as it unjustifiably criminalises asylum seekers.
The reference to cost is made without giving any information about the grants given by the EU to alleviate this burden. Besides, few point out the contribution through their work that many asylum seekers give after they leave the detention centres. In spite of the qualifications that many asylum seekers have acquired in their countries they are given jobs that many Maltese do not want to do. Exploitation stories abound.
The book also mentions that those who have not met asylum seekers face to face harbour the worst stereotypes about the same persons. The same situation prevails in Malta. I suggest that the NGOs working in this area would do their best to increase the occasions of direct contacts between asylum seekers and the Maltese. This would help us realise that beneath the dark skin and ‘strange’ customs their lies human being who have passed through horrific experiences. They deserve all our support.