In previous work (O’Neill and Harindranath, 2006) I suggested that people come to understand the lived experience of ‘asylum’ and migration through the mediated images and narratives of mass media institutions as well as advocacy groups, networks and academic research. The media politics of asylum can be seen as constituted through the weaving together of legal, governance and media narratives/messages for general consumption. Moreover, while the mainstream media contribute to debates on the notion of asylum, they are thus crucially implicated in the politics of representation of refugees and asylum seekers.

Research on the media representation of asylum seekers and refugees illustrates ‘the relentless repetition and overemphasis of precisely those images that reinforce particular stereotypes and a failure to source more diverse images to illustrate the many other aspects of the asylum issue’ (O’Neill and Harindranath, 2006, p 40). Bailey and Harindranath (2005, p 274) argue that in media representations there often takes place a ‘discussion of policy issues in an outwardly reasonable language, but one using words and phrases that are calculated to carry a different message to the target audience’. The asylum seeker is represented as an undesirable alien, occasionally represented as a possible threat to national sovereignty and security. This is humiliating at the level of lived experience, representation and embedded in the institutional processes of media production.

Much of the knowledge generated by advocacy groups, organisations, self-organised groups and services supporting asylum seekers and refugees provides much needed alternative voices, dispelling myths and promoting better understanding and knowledge. However, the knowledge generated is also subject to media representation and this tends not to be constituted by the voices of refugees and asylum seekers. Thus asylum seekers and refugees are represented by others, such as NGOs, advocacy and support groups.