Ingi Iusmen and William Shankley explore the "concerted political effort to deny Albanians sanctuary in the United Kingdom"
An interesting new peer-reviewed study, published last week in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, examines the UK government's negative framing of Albanian asylum seekers, arguing that racialised and gendered narratives underpinned Home Office policy targeting this group from 2022 onwards.
Image credit: WikipediaThe article, authored by Ingi Iusmen of the University of Southampton and William Shankley of the University of Liverpool, can be read online here.
The authors analyse government rhetoric, media messaging and official data to explore how the UK political establishment has negatively characterised asylum seekers from Albania in recent years, which framed Albania as 'safe' and Albanian males as a security and criminality concern. This allowed the government to adopt an explicitly anti-Albanian policy and legal agenda from 2022 onwards.
Iusmen and Shankley explain: "We show that the racialised (focus on Albanians, perceived through peripheral whiteness) and gendered (through the lens of male Albanians) criminalisation of Albanian migrants was underscored by Albania being described as a safe country of origin: these two interlinked narratives helped the anti-Albanian agenda setting at the government level, which has been pushed by the government since 2022."
The study says that the "government has manipulated concepts of safety, and therefore deservingness, to further its political agenda, constructing narratives or frames of 'deserving' versus 'undeserving' for different nationals claiming asylum."
It continues: "Importantly, the 'othering' of asylum-seekers via undeservingness is often reinforced by narratives centred on racialised criminality, whereby criminal behaviour is associated with certain ethnic and racial groups. Recent evidence shows how the 'othering' of specific asylum groups via racial criminalisation framings occurs in accommodation settings (Guma et al., 2024). There remains a lack of comprehensive research on Albanian nationals and the British government's approach to them, especially in light of the latest surge in Albanian arrivals and the accompanying legal and political immigration deterrence measures. It is therefore important to consider how the government frames the 'deservingness' of Albanian asylum claims and how these framings are employed to reinforce the anti-immigration political agenda."
As the study highlights, the UK government's pledge to "stop the boats" led to direct ministerial intervention in the handling of Albanian asylum claims. The authors observe how officials were instructed to refuse most Albanian claims as "undeserving" following the 2022 rise in arrivals, as evidenced by the findings of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) and the introduction of Operation BRIDORA. The operation imposed differential treatment on Albanian cases, including limits on grant rates and instructions not to approve claims, contributing to a high proportion of refusals and withdrawals justified by Albania being designated a "safe country".
The article states: "The politicisation of Albanian arrivals trumped how their claims should have been assessed by the Home Office caseworkers. According to the ICIBI's reports, updated versions of the Home Office's Country Policy and Information Notes (CPINs) on blood feuds and trafficking in Albania were published in early 2023. The CPINs are the main country information documents used by Home Office caseworkers to guide their evaluation of asylum claims. Under political pressure, the Home Office had to amend its depiction of safety for returned Albanian trafficked women, making a Home Office official to conclude that 'suddenly it looked like trafficked women can go back after all and there is sufficiency of protection; suddenly we are sending trafficked women back' (Neal, 2023a: 59). Most significantly, the politicisation of the Albanian claims also meant that these were aggregated instead of treating them on an individual case basis."
Alongside this, Albanian arrivals were framed in political and media discourse through a lens of criminality. The authors explain how Albanian asylum seekers were predominantly portrayed as male and associated with organised crime, drawing on gendered tropes that link masculinity with criminal behaviour. This framing shaped how the issue was defined as a public safety problem, rather than primarily a protection issue.
The study further contends that, despite Albanians being phenotypically white, racialisation still played a significant role. The authors draw on the concept of "peripheral whiteness" to argue that Albanians were positioned at the margins of whiteness and more readily associated with criminality, a process reinforced by inflammatory political language and supportive media narratives.
Using insights from Albanian experts, the study observes that policy measures introduced to curb Albanian arrivals were driven primarily by political considerations and enabled by the spike in Channel crossings in 2022. The authors explain that portraying Albanian asylum seekers as "undeserving" or criminal helped make restrictive policies more electorally appealing, while obscuring evidence that many claims - particularly those involving women and children - were successful.
The authors conclude: "Our empirical analysis showed that there was a concerted political effort to deny Albanians sanctuary in the United Kingdom, despite evidence from Albanian experts refuting the government's portrayal of Albanian institutions and laws as being able to protect vulnerable groups, as those who seek protection in the United Kingdom. Viewing all Albanians through a racialised and gendered 'criminalisation' lens, the UK state fails to acknowledge that the right to protection is individual and should be open to all Albanians despite their nationality, as we show, there are some who are fleeing persecution, and thus, are deserving of protection."