Features & opinion: Refugees, asylum seekers & migrants

20.07.2004 Commissioned by the Mayor of London the Media image, community impact report, published 13 July 2004, explores the link between media and political coverage of asylum issues, hostility to asylum seekers and refugees, patterns of racial incidents and increased community tensions.

15.04.2004 The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a series of graphic adverts for mobile phone giant Nokia featuring the murder scene of an asylum seeker in Scotland for causing "serious or widespread" offence, report Scotland on Sunday and the Institute of Race Relations.

05.04.2004 Britain's tabloid papers have cheered UK government "action", as they put it, to "stem" the arrival of people the papers don't like from the countries that will join the EU after 1 May. The popular press sunk to new depths as their speculative figures rose; The Sun said "tens of thousands" of eastern European Roma planned to settle in Britain; The Express claimed 1.6 million were "ready to flood in". Karin Waringo comments on the big scare stories.

02.03.2004 In Scotland and Wales, Oxfam is working with others to challenge negative and inflammatory reporting of asylum issues; to generate positive images of asylum seekers; and to ensure that their voices are heard

19.02.2004 Whether you are a newspaper editor, columnist, broadcaster, or politician; if you choose to descend to the level of the gutter in what you publish or say in public, you should expect the worst kind of reaction from your readers or from your listeners. On no subject is this more true at this time than on that of asylum seekers.

09.02.2004 Flooding the British labour market, plundering the social system, diffusing illicit drugs and fostering crime. With these headlines British tabloids have relaunched a racist-led media campaign against Roma. The European Information Office condemns the anti-Roma media campaign in the UK in the wake of EU enlargement.

02.02.2004 Media coverage of immigration issues in the UK has been slanted, according to a study of three major newspapers by Media Lens. The papers were largely sensationalist in their approach and skirted over broader issues about asylum and immigration.

22.01.2004 Newspapers have been scaremongering over Europe's Roma communities, some of whom will, from May, have the right to migrate to Britain. Are these the first shots in a press campaign against Blunkett's "new migrants"?