From harmful stereotypes to media silence, how mainstream media narratives overlook the lived realities of migrant women, and what independent platforms are doing to reclaim the story.
By Sarah Pass
In an interconnected, highly online, and algorithmic media landscape that tilts towards hyperconsumption, media narratives have become vital in shaping how politics and people are presented to the general public. Increasing partisanship in the political and social sphere is reflected on-air and online, often leading to criticisms of bias or accusations of censorship.
In its essential form, media and news organisations should be an informative service capable of holding political and private industry figures accountable at the behest of the people. This often does not come to pass when factoring in ownership, political allegiances, and often the financial incentives earned from engaging in news coverage that values stoking public outrage. In today’s highly digital and polarised media landscape, the press plays a powerful role in shaping public understanding of politics and people. As news organisations increasingly prioritise clicks and outrage, coverage around migration has often become a tool to stoke division, fuelled by stereotypes, false narratives, and a persistent tendency to frame migrants as threats.
Media narratives around migration internationally have often used these tactics as a way of weaponising differences across borders to fuel xenophobic campaigns that rely on the untrue stereotyping of migrants, and allowing for discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, religion, or language.
The wrongful representation of migrants in the news can often be difficult to correct, as migrant communities often lack the resources necessary to compete in the media market and reach a larger audience. Women migrants are often the worst in being underrepresented and misunderstood, whilst also facing the most barriers in achieving positive success. Women migrants often lack agency in how their stories are depicted in the news and are subjected to narratives that fail to capture their whole experience.
“As a journalist, I saw a lack of best practices in journalism and a missing human perspective in mainstream coverage of immigration,” says Juliana de Penha, founding editor of Migrant Women Press, a platform dedicated to publishing, reporting, and opinion pieces by migrant and diaspora women. “As a migrant woman, I didn’t see my experiences reflected. So, I decided to create a platform that takes an intersectional approach to migration coverage.”
Juliana’s work is part of a growing wave of independent media that are stepping in where mainstream outlets fall short. While tabloids continue to weaponise migration stories—with headlines that present migrants as criminals, burdens, or cultural outsiders—organisations like Migrant Women Press are challenging this narrative from within migrant communities themselves. Her aim is clear: to not only challenge dominant media portrayals of migrants but to create concrete opportunities for underrepresented women in the media industry.
So, in what ways can we see the media misrepresenting the experiences of women migrants?
Media Migration Narratives
Migration has become a significant concern for the British public in recent years. Media and news organisations in the UK, in particular the tabloid press, have frequently seized conversations around migration to push forward narratives that promote negative perceptions and harmful stereotypes of migrants, as well as perpetuating attacks that blame the UK’s migrant population for political failures, such as a lack of jobs and housing, economic strain, and crime.
The British media has also been accused of portraying migrants as the perpetual “other”, by highlighting their foreignness, often by decrying imperfect English and different, diverse cultures and religions, and fearmongering. Common false narratives also include the imagery of foreigners, typically of non-white ethnicities, as “dirty” or migrants refusing to adhere to “British culture”, and the positioning of migrants as a threat to white society in the right-wing media, such as recent GBNews output platforming anti-immigration advocates by claiming “White Britons will become a minority by 2070” and seeking to normalise systems of racism and xenophobic under rhetoric of “protecting” their idea of “Western society and values”, which is often a dog whistle for white supremacist views.
Other tabloid coverage, such as The Sun, offers the coverage of the “UK immigration crisis” with headlines such as “MIGRANT MADNESS: Huge immigration crackdown launched as as Keir Starmer vows to STOP courts from letting foreign crooks dodge deportation” and “HOME TRUTHS: How Labour is bribing landlords to house migrants and OUTBID Brits trying to rent – and YOU are paying for it” that vilify migrants and present them as antithetical to Britons, and therefore worth opposing.
By positioning migrants as the “other” in widely viewed or read media, people who are often entering the UK as refugees or otherwise to seek economic and social stability are put at risk of marginalisation, exclusion, and violence. The normalisation of negative attitudes towards migration in the media can also lead to the elevation of politicians such as Nigel Farage and the Reform party, who use migrants as scapegoats for right-wing political endeavours that are unpopular with the British public, and harmful public policy that seeks to discredit and disenfranchise migrants.
Media narratives that represented migrants as a “threat” to the UK can disproportionately affect women migrants, who are already disadvantaged in finding work visas and attaining economic stability, wherein they will be attacked for “stealing jobs” that could have otherwise gone to Britons. Women migrants might also face repeated physical and verbal abuse, targeted for their gender and migration status.
When asked whether her work has shifted in response to rising hostility towards migrants, Juliana remains resolute. “My mission hasn’t changed—I’ve always been committed to challenging inhumane, biased, racist, sexist, and xenophobic narratives. While the current political climate is harsh, it’s never been easy. What’s changed is the level of support available to organisations like ours, making it even more difficult to continue without adequate resources.” Still, she insists that this is a crucial time to keep going. “Now more than ever, it is vital to maintain spaces that challenge negative narratives, offer fair coverage, and bring more diverse voices into the media.”
In 2024, the BBC spoke to women migrants from eastern Europe who were subjected to hate crimes at a rising rate, including a woman who reported a group of men threw a bottle at her, and shouted “Brexit, get out of here”. Complex and unclear immigration policy and a lack of resources for women migrants facing poverty often lead to situations wherein they are viewed as “easy targets” for physical, sexual, or verbal abuse, as they would be more likely to fear reporting a crime to the police or taking legal action. The dehumanization of women migrants by typical media narratives that present migrants as an “other” and existing stereotypes that are perpetuated by the media can be deeply harmful to their safety and dignity – the BBC report also detailed that many eastern European migrant women reported men assuming they were sex workers, which could potentially escalate into a dangerous situation. Propelling narratives that also claim migrants of different races and ethnicities are “replacing” white Britons, can also do the most harm to women migrants who can give birth or are already mothers, as statistics show births in the UK to foreign mothers are only increasing at 30.3% in 2022, continuing the long term-trend. Racist, xenophobic attitudes and an uptick in discussion from right-wing media in the West that prioritizes raising the birth rate and a culture of pronatalism are often antagonistic and dangerous towards migrant women, especially those who identify as non-white.
Gender and Public Perception
Gender is often an overlooked category in which migrants are often misrepresented by the media. Discriminatory practices faced by migrant women looking to settle in the UK garner little widespread attention, and prevailing attitudes of sexism, racism, and xenophobia are antagonistic in their approach to the voices of migrant women. Migrant women can face a plethora of issues when living in the UK, including trauma, a lack of economic resources, social and/or religious isolation, fear of gender-based violence, and a complex legal system. Migrant women often face less security and are more likely to be dependent on others for their ability to remain in the UK, according to the Women’s Budget Group study on women migrants in 2020. A lack of accurate media representation often subjects them to untrue stereotypes and leaves women migrants further struggling to feel a sense of safety and belonging in the UK.
Women migrants who come to the UK as refugees are underrepresented in the media. The UNCHR states that 50% of all refugees are women and girls, but research and reporting exclusively focused on female refugees is less common, and these women, often forced to migrate because of the repression of women or other dire circumstances that prevent a dignified life, are silenced in the media.
2024 Research from the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies determined how prominent news channels often neglected content on refugee women, revealing that out of 13,539 videos produced by mainstream news organisations worldwide, including the BBC, only 1082 dealt with the topic of female refugees, which validates the notion that a lower propensity of media time is spent dedicated to women refugees. This research also analysed the representation of refugee women presented as individuals in said videos, finding that most did not feature a woman who was seen or heard from outside of mass scenes. This also demonstrated that there is a lack of long-form video content focused on women refugees. The underrepresentation of women refugees signifies the larger issue at hand – the diminishment of women’s voices in a space that intentionally calls for advocacy and support. Amnesty International states that in times of armed conflict, gender discrimination and violence towards women are likely to increase. The removal of women’s voices from the media in times when they are suffering the most reveals a disturbing imbalance of power in the narrative that dismisses the personal experiences of migrant women.
For Juliana, tackling systemic issues in the UK media landscape is a necessity in advocating for better representation for women migrants. “The lack of diversity in the media industry is a critical issue, alongside the concentrated ownership of media outlets,” she notes. “A report by the Media Reform Coalition found that just three companies dominate 90% of national newspaper circulation, resulting in a lack of plural voices.”
She highlights another concern: the near-invisibility of women of colour in UK news production. “These findings reflect what we see every day in the media—the near-total absence of our voices in the mainstream.”
The topic of women refugees got the most attention with sensationalist headlines that mentioned inhumane treatment towards these women, such as rape and sex trafficking. Although this highlights the reality of gender-based violence that plagues women worldwide in conflict zones, it also risks exploiting the traumatic experiences of these women and gives them little chance to control the narrative and tell their own stories.
Women migrants are deserving of media spaces that offer agency and the opportunity to explore a range of perspectives that often go unheard in the mainstream media. At a time when immigration has become a polarising political issue, organisations must step up and platform the voices of migrants themselves to challenge conventional views and expand the diversity of viewpoints, instead of relinquishing control to racist, sexist, xenophobic narratives that seek to demonise migrants. Emphasising lived experiences and expanding fair coverage in the news should be the path forward to ensure equitable justice for women migrants in both the media and daily life. Juliana’s work—and the determination of others like her—demonstrates that change is not only necessary but possible. For the media to truly reflect the societies it serves, it must confront its own exclusions. Migrant women are not peripheral to the migration debate; they are at its very heart.
This article is part of the series “Women On The Move. Fleeing, Fighting, Forgotten”. To read more inspiring stories of everyday women making a real difference in the world, be sure to check out the latest edition of Wempower magazine or listen to our podcast.
