At the time of writing, over one hundred thousand people have signed up to the UK government’s resettlement scheme for Ukrainian refugees. Families, women, and children are welcome. Britain’s doors and hearts have opened as the conflict in Ukraine reaches its first month. Also at the time of writing, there are debates in parliament demonising, and endlessly wringing hands the ‘small boat migrants’ and refugees ‘smuggling’ into the country. Twitter explodes with the latest Zelensky thirst trap meanwhile Afghan and Syrian refugees are left alone and long-forgotten.
The refugee and asylum process is a multifaceted socio-political monster entrenched in complex foreign policy history. While one game of Risk at Christmas has not made me an expert in foreign policy, it has been made clear that the British public has decided beyond doubt who exactly counts as save-able. How the UK responds to this conflict will not just feed the perceptions of the war as it goes on but shows the rest of the world that some people are more equal than others, particularly if they’ve got white skin and Instagram.
I am surprised, though perhaps I shouldn’t be that while the UK government is currently making up its mind about what to do about Afghans fleeing a Taliban usurpation (a pie in which the British had more than a few fingers), they have been able to draw up a whole package of refugee aid for Ukrainians. As it turns out, it’s so much worse when people who have Netflix accounts, Tik-Tok, and white skin are bombed. Of course, we should be offering more help, because if this could happen to someone that looks just like us, it could happen to us!
The narrative that has emerged in the British media alone since February has been a heady mix of WW2 ‘we need you’ and ‘think of the children’ sensationalism resulting in an overpowering saviour complex amongst the British public. A recent radio programme followed a journalist as he sauntered around Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof. Ukrainians bundling off trains, suitcases and pets in hand were asked in convivial, almost festive tones how they managed the journey, what their plans were, and what’s the name of their dog?
Watching the war unfold from the safety of our homes offers a controlled management of interference, it’s a comfortable means of appeasing guilt from the British involvement in the Middle East. It’s easier to hate Russia when we watch it do what we’ve done to many countries before it. It’s easier to save its victims than acknowledge our part in creating them in other countries.
For the West this war is one of ideals, it’s the Cold War for the Gen Z generation and after Covid, we seem to be gasping for another reason to all come together and be a hero. We fucked it with Syria, w Iraq, and Afghanistan so now’s our chance to get it right. So now that we’ve decided that Ukrainians are Westerners (crucially without any of the legal or political advantages afforded to Europeans) we romanticise them, they’re special refugees, they want to complain about the subway, not sleep in its stations. They must be saved because they were already on our side. It’s an easy gloss over the more icky sides of xenophobia in vox pop international relations. You’re Syrian? We can’t save you; we don’t understand you.
And this conflict is on our screens constantly in a continuous screaming loop, compounding the urgency. For the first time, we have immediate, relentless coverage of the war from first-hand accounts. Perhaps then, people still care as much as usual (i.e., almost nothing) but as the latest Molotov Cocktail recipe hits our For You page and we sharpie Team Zelensky on our t-shirts, it seems easier to care about something that has its own algorithm set up for you to care about.
The UK’s responses to what’s happening in Ukraine signal to any non-white, non-European that ever wanted to give us the benefit of the doubt that we actually don’t give a shit so don’t hold your breath.
Giving another one of his Churchill-ian speeches at the Tory Party conference in Blackpool recently, Johnson told the audience that ‘the world must make choices’. To the thousands of casualties who were the wrong colour, to all the refugees from the wrong countries left adrift and drowning in the Channel, it seems like we already have.
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