The Headlines
Rising xenophobia and racism in UK’s higher ed
After anti-immigration riots swept across the UK and with international students making up nearly a quarter of the student population, how should universities respond?
By Julie Hoeflinger
“We hope this positive response helps reassure current and potential international students that the UK welcomes and values diversity – and stands up to show it.”
Peaking in early August, anti-immigration protests and violence led by far-right extremists have surged across the UK. Mosques, shops and asylum hotels have been attacked and even lit on fire by rioters, mostly by white British men. Many police officers have also been injured during these violent gatherings. Non-white people, asylum seekers and Muslims have been the target of these attacks, with extremists chanting, ‘Stop the boats’ and ‘We want our country back.’
These protests have been met with numerous anti-racist counter demonstrations, with some attracting crowds in the hundreds. However, despite these efforts, safety remains a concern for at-risk groups.
A number of countries have issued official travel advisories warning their citizens to exercise caution while visiting the UK, including India, which sent more students to the UK in 2022-2023 than any other country. Such advisories may cause potential students to reconsider whether they’d like to attend university in the UK. In fact, according to Vaibhav Gupta, the Chief Marketing Officer at an AI based app for study abroad iSchoolConnect, there is an expected 20 percent decline in student intake for the UK this year.
Additionally, Muslim students make up around 10 percent of the UK’s total university student population. But according to recent data, roughly 70 percent of UK Muslim students choose to live at home while studying at university, which is much higher than the national average of 40 percent for all students. If current events continue, this trend is likely to rise.
Some universities have responded to these riots by taking to social media or sending out newsletters with statements condemning the ideology behind the protests, though some have not. Oxford University published a statement across their social media platforms in the first week of August with the caption, ‘We stand together in opposition to violence, racism and Islamophobia’.
Universities UK International (UUKi) also made a statement reassuring international students about the current climate and drawing attention to the counter demonstrations, stating, “We hope this positive response helps reassure current and potential international students that the UK welcomes and values diversity – and stands up to show it.”
“Migration, as a fundamental dimension of human life, must be normalised and accounted for across all areas of public policy."
Are these statements enough to address deeply rooted xenophobia and racism in higher education?
In a paper published three years ago by Sofia Akel, an award-winning historian, writer and lecturer specialising in Black British history, Islamphobia has been on the rise in higher education and only recently has this rise been examined formally.
One such study published last year, investigated the student experience of Islamophobia in the UK and found – in contradiction to previous reports stating that overt hate incidents by Muslim students were low – that nearly a quarter of Muslim students in the sample experienced Islamophobia in the form of direct verbal abuse, name calling or derogatory slurs. Since the spread of hate speech online has been linked to the outbreak of the current riots, it’s critical that universities work harder to address it presence on campuses.
According to Akel’s report conducted at London Metropolitan University, universities are failing to recognise and properly address Islamophobia, and that it remains unchallenged and even normalised in many institutions. A survey conducted at the university found that 45 percent of students felt that they didn’t have a safe space to discuss the issues they faced. “Higher education has been an incubator for harbouring and facilitating this form of racism in all of its pernicious manifestations,” states sociologist and writer Dr Jason Arday in the foreword of the report.
A critical first step in the report was to properly define Islamophobia, and in November 2020, London Metropolitan University became the first UK university to adopt the working definition of Islamophobia as proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims.
The report goes on to share several recommendations that universities should adopt in order to properly address and minimise Islamophobia, which include “updating complaints procedures, educating staff on Islamophobia, and supporting religious observance on campus”.
Counter demonstrations are not enough – leaders need to step up
“These are responses to symptoms, not to the underlying problems,” writes Bridget Anderson, Dan Godshaw, and Ann Singleton in a recent statement released by the University of Bristol. The authors point out that xenophobic sentiment and demonisation of asylum seekers has been made acceptable in British institutional politics by both former Conservative and current Labour ministers, with slogans such as, ‘Stop the boats’ receiving insufficient denunciation.
Attacking asylum seekers is not a form of ‘protest,’ it is violence; and this violence isn’t ‘mindless thuggery’ as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer described it, it is racist violence, the authors explain. While the counter demonstrations are a great form of showing solidarity against racism, they are not enough to squash the rising extremism.
“Migration, as a fundamental dimension of human life, must be normalised and accounted for across all areas of public policy,” the statement reads. “The hostile environment must be dismantled. Politicians must stop scapegoating ‘migrants’ for the social harms of neoliberalism.”
Universities can and must be the leaders of this change, especially if the UK wants to preserve its excellence in higher education. A large percentage of that excellence is owed to immigrants, Muslims and non-white people – thus it will require much greater leadership.