How crisis discourse shapes UK asylum governance : from framing to administrative practice

Tools

Meer, Nasar and Hill, Emma (2026) How crisis discourse shapes UK asylum governance : from framing to administrative practice. Policy and Politics. ISSN 0305-5736 (https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2026D000000097)

[thumbnail of Meer-Hill-PP-2026-How-crisis-discourse-shapes-UK-asylum-governance]
Preview
 Text. Filename: Meer-Hill-PP-2026-How-crisis-discourse-shapes-UK-asylum-governance.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript
License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 logo
Download (377kB)| Preview

Abstract

This article explores how discourses of crisis shape aspects of UK asylum governance. Bringing Teun A. van Dijk’s ‘ideological square’ into conversation with framing and political-communication literatures, it suggests that an evaluative pattern (foregrounding ‘our’ positives and ‘their’ negatives while backgrounding counterexamples) informs agenda-setting, legislative change, and some administrative routines. Drawing on interview accounts from residents on their experiences of accommodation, precarious support systems, and administrative burden, it traces these dynamics through examples that include the issue of ‘asylum hotels’, showing how privatised contracts, backlog-driven contingency accommodation, and media optics convert bureaucratic failure into a spectacle that legitimises deterrence while obscuring governance design. Conceptually, the article extends the ideological square from discourse analysis to the epistemic architecture of government, showing how issue bias curates what counts as policy relevant truth. It concludes by advocating the ‘good governance of evidence’ and systematic auditing of administrative burdens as countermeasures to crisis-based legitimacy, recentring proportionality, legality, and protection within asylum policy.

ORCID iDs

Meer, Nasar and Hill, Emma ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4412-4692;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)