Tenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

The relationship between migrants and healthcare is highly topical and increasingly politicised. Indeed, some framings of this relationship propose a migrant crisis as the cause of the financial crises in public services, notably the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). “Hostile environment” policies have resulted in restricted access to healthcare for migrants with incomplete documentation. The impact of this policy on migrants from the Windrush generation gained considerable media coverage and ultimately led to the resignation of the Home Secretary Amber Rudd. This study aimed to understand the use of framing by the popular press and the intended impact on public opinion and policy. To do this a frame analysis was conducted on daily UK newspaper articles from the breaking of the Windrush scandal to Rudd’s resignation. A total of 88 articles were gathered from the LexisNexis database for analysis. Frame clusters and meta-frames were generated, most notably: worthy and unworthy migrants; time since arrival in the UK as a proxy for worthiness and migrants contributing to, versus draining, the NHS. These frames were used to promote welfare chauvinism (restricting access) by the right-leaning press; or welfare universalism, by the left-leaning papers. Given that media representation of migrants has been shown to not only influence public opinion but also political agenda, it is increasingly important to understand how the British Press represents how migrants interact with the NHS.