Thursday 29 October 2009

'Anti-Immigrant Porn' Comes To Upton Park

According to traders at Queens Market in Upton Park, immigration officers from the UK Border Agency turned up in force at the market on the last two Friday afternoons and arrested and detained people.

They were accompanied by a film crew who were filming for UK Border Force, a ‘reality show’ that goes out on Sky One at 9pm Saturday nights and features the agency rounding up 'illegal immigrants'. These incidents are not the first time that filming for the show has taken place locally – its film crews have focused before on raids in and around Green Street.

In 2008, the Home Office paid £400,000 to a independent production company called Steadfast Television, whose other classics include CCTV: You Are Being Watched, Sky Cops, Cars Cops and Criminals, and Brit Cops: Frontline Crime. This funding for UK Border Force, a programme that is pure propaganda for the government’s hard-line view on immigration. proved so controversial that Sky decided to hand it back in September 2008 – but not before the first series had already been made.

For anyone who has never seen an episode, the programme has a completely sympathetic and uncritical approach to the UK Border Agency. It ‘embedded journalism’ ignores questions about the impact or fairness of immigration raids (even those based on incredibly flawed intelligence) or to refused entries, embraces jargon about 'clandestines' and ‘illegals’ and offers no context to wider political debate about immigration and asylum or the injustices that lead people to flee their countries to travel to the UK. The portrayal of people on the receiving end of the UK Border Agency’s activities is dehumanising and their fear and desperation is largely invisible, making the series little more than anti-immigrant porn, a brand of unpleasant voyeurism that turns people’s lives into ‘entertainment’.

If anyone spots Steadfast Television’s film crews again, please can they contact Newham Monitoring Project on 0800 169 3111

1 Comment:

interested in immigration said...

Hello, just wondering where you got the information that the Home Office provided funding for UK Border Force? I can't seem to find it on Steadfast Television's website.

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