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This research explores how the refugee crisis intersects with perceptions of terrorism in Brexit Britain.

April 30, 2019Open Access

Conflating the Muslim refugee and the terror suspect: responses to the Syrian refugee “crisis” in Brexit Britain

Key Points

This research explores how the refugee crisis intersects with perceptions of terrorism in Brexit Britain.
Analyzed public responses to Syrian refugees post-2015 Paris attacks.
Examined the impact of Brexit and populism on attitudes towards refugees and Muslims.
Developed a theoretical framework, Concentrationary Gothic, to understand racialized narratives.
Identified a merging of narratives around Muslim refugees and terror suspects.
Found increased anti-Muslim sentiments linked to national security debates.
Demonstrated that security concerns often overshadow human rights in policy discussions.

Abstract

The Syrian refugee “crisis” has prompted contradictory responses of securitization of European borders on the one hand, and grassroots compassion on the other, that posit a universal conception of the human deserving of equal rights to safety irrespective of racial or religious difference. However, in the aftermath of the 2015 and 2016 Paris terror attacks there has been a backlash against refugees amid fears of Islamist terrorists exploiting refugee channels to enter Europe, as well as an upsurge in a populist nationalism framing Brexit and anti-Muslim hostility following recent UK terror attacks. I argue that the convergence of the “Muslim refugee” and the “terror suspect” as threatening mobilizes a racialized biopolitics present in intersecting counter-terrorism and asylum regimes that prioritise security concerns above human rights. I advance the Concentrationary Gothic as a framework for understanding continuities in logics of racial terror framing the “Muslim question” within the Syrian refugee “crisis.”.

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