Description
Responding to culture war debates in the UK and their policy implications, this article unpacks representations of ‘the illegal migrant’ and ‘the transwoman’ as cultural figures in mainstream media discourses from January – August 2023. It does so in the acknowledgement of the particularly intense rolling back of the rights of both trans and migrant communities during this period, as the UK Government has both responded to and created an atmosphere of public fear and hostility. Responding to the intimate relationship between media representations, public discourse and government policy, the paper studies themes of sexuality, gender and racism in The Guardian, The Daily Mail, and The Times newspapers. In particular, it investigates the extent to which depictions of trans women and migrants invading perceived ‘safe spaces’ (i.e. ‘the changing room/toilet’ or ‘the British homeland’) operate through similar logics, what this says about the character of British political discourse, and dominant understandings of the nation itself. On a practical level, it also considers the functions that this discourse plays both domestically and internationally, how this relates to the international policing of (im)migration, and how these representations can be/have been effectively challenged.
