New book says Ireland doesn’t treat refugees well; media partly to blame

I don’t know if they do or they don’t, but this author has written an entire book on how Irish society is reacting to the third worlders arriving on the Emerald Isle.   Type ‘Ireland’ into our search function* and see that Muslim Somalis and Rohingya are among the refugees resettled there.

Here is a blub from the book entitled ‘The Exclusion of Refugees and Asylum Seekers from Irish Society‘ by Zoe Hughes.

The author reports that even the mainstream news media in Ireland has a negative view of refugees — that’s a new one on me!

     Irish government policy towards refugees and asylum seekers is increasingly restrictive and geared towards confining their participation in and excluding them from Irish society. This is evident from a regime created through institutions and policies that stratify rights in accordance with race-based administrative categories, with refugees and asylum seekers occupying the lowest levels. This trend is also reflected in the media in Ireland where negative framing of refugee and asylum issues as threats to security and to the moral fabric of society has normalised these policies of exclusion. The fact that the media is mainstream society’s main source of information about marginalised groups like asylum seekers and refugees, and the fact that the government and policy-makers have the greatest voice within the media has important implications for the way in which the public view refugees and asylum seekers.   [Fascinating—if true, why is the media in Ireland not as politically correct as elsewhere in the West?—ed]

* In fact we have written a lot about Ireland over the years, so do type ‘Ireland’ into our search function for dozens of mentions.  One post in particular about Irish writer Kevin Myers from 2008 just caught my eye.  Myers on Somalia in an article no longer available at the Irish Independent:

Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, Kalashnikov-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts.

LOL! Maybe Ms. Hughes has a point, you would never see a line like that (or the previous one I didn’t repeat here) in the American media!