‘We’re not right-wing or racist but…’: Far-right myth and distributive conflict in asylum seeker related protest in the Republic of Ireland,November 2022–July 2023

Introduction

Asylum seeker and migrant-related protests in the Republic of Ireland have become, on average, almost daily occurrences since the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Mc Gee (2024) reports that 307 such protests took place throughout the country in 2022 and a similar number in 2023. Far-right elements within these protests have been particularly effective at weaponising the stresses and fears caused by the decades-long housing and homelessness crisis affecting large swathes of the population in the country (Hearne, 2023).

This article seeks to examine more closely the reasons why people attend such protests, both against and in support of asylum seeker accommodation. We sought to answer this question by identifying and analysing quotes cited in three well-known Irish online media outlets from people justifying their attendance at such protests. While we recognise the limitations to such an approach, we find that the article supports findings in the literature on similar protests in Ireland, the United Kingdom and Europe, particularly with regard to difficulties in disentangling far-right-inspired racist and xenophobic tropes from legitimate grievances around structural and resource issues, such as access to housing and other stretched services. We conclude that due to such classification difficulties, more detailed qualitative research is needed to help better understand such apparent confusion and so help limit the growth of the far right in Ireland.

Why do people mobilise in support of, or against, asylum-seeker accommodation?

Work on Irish (Fanning, 2021; O’Donohoe, 2023; Peillon, 2002), British (Grillo, 2005; Hubbard, 2005), and European (Eckardt, 2020; Fleischmann, 2020; Gootjes et al., 2021; Rea and Martiniello, 2019) asylum seeker and migrant related protest, finds ideological, political, and structural motivations for such protest attendance. Ideologically, some protestors present nativist, racist and xenophobic motivations; politically, some protestors aim to ‘(re)produce dominant exclusions or introduce new modes of discrimination’ to achieve a unified, socially homogeneous, arcadian past (Fleischmann, 2020: 21), while structurally protestors resist integration for fear of worsening or losing access to existing resources. Research also finds that those who support asylum seekers, usually express universalist, humanitarian motivations but also political motivations criticising state policy on asylum seekers (Della Porta and Steinhilper, 2021; Fleischmann, 2020; Karakayalı, 2019; Meijeren et al., 2023). Nonetheless, much of this research finds that boundaries between these different categorisations are slippery, overlapping and contested, and that some categories, especially the ideological and the political, can be expressed explicitly or implicitly, intentionally or unintentionally, in others.

Methodology

We sought to look at these concerns in a more systematic manner by examining quotes in the media from people who mobilised in support of and against asylum-seeker accommodation to ascertain to what extent this latest cycle of protest conformed to the findings from the literature. While we recognise that such an approach has its limitations, as content studied is pre-selected by journalists and quotes can be taken out of context, it nonetheless can provide a fairly rapid and cost-effective insight into protestor motivations, which can then be tested against findings in existing literature on the subject. Results, we hope, can help suggest future research on the issue, and we provide some recommendations here based on this research exercise.

Three major national online news sources were chosen for this research – irishtimes.com, journal.ie and independent.ie. These sources were chosen as they are the three most widely read independently owned news sites in the country, have cross-generational appeal, unlike state broadcaster RTE News Online service, for example, which has a much older readership base, and have a variety of ideological positioning, with independent.ie considered centre-right, the journal.ie centre left, and irishtimes.com somewhere in-between (Murrell et al., 2023). As such they are among the most representative of quality news sites in the country and thus well positioned to provide comprehensive and frequent reports on the protest incidents under study, mitigating to an extent some of the difficulties with our research approach cited above.

We collected 144 articles in total published between November 2022 and July 2023, covering 14 protest locations in urban and rural locations, both against and in support of asylum seeker accommodation. Only articles which contained direct quotes from protestors or counter-protestors were included. Cases of overlap, where the same quote appeared in multiple articles, were noted during the analysis and recorded as a single instance. Quotes (and any relevant context) were collected into a single document, analysed using the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti and coded. A total of 27 themes emerged, and individual Word documents for each theme were created, into which all quotes relevant to that theme were copied. Instances of repetition of themes were then ranked numerically according to the frequency of mentions. In this article, due to space considerations, we only discuss the top three most common themes found among each category of protestor (anti-asylum seeker accommodation protestors and those supportive of asylum seekers).

Anti-asylum seeker accommodation protest motivations

Among the anti-asylum seeker protestors, the three most commonly occurring themes were safety, relating primarily to personal safety, especially for women, children and the elderly (occurring 52 times), resource stretching and scarcity, primarily of resources such as housing, education, welfare benefits and health (44), and lack of consultation by the government over the siting of asylum seeker accommodation (42). Marking a departure from previous research which has looked at this area, we suggest there is a need to view this milieu as comprising two relatively separate groups, which we’ve described as the ‘moderate anti-asylum seeker accommodation demonstrators’ and the ‘Far-Right’. By ‘moderate’ we mean those who place primary emphasis on political and structural complaints and by ‘Far-Right’ we mean those motivated by racist, xenophobic and nativist ideologies. However, as noted previously, while there are notable slippages between the two, ‘moderate’ protestors are characterised by frequent attempts to distance themselves from ‘Far-Right’ protestors.

The moderate anti-asylum seeker accommodation protestors, the larger of the two groups, are typically people from the community, whose opposition is often grounded in local issues, such as the unsuitability of infrastructure/amenities for large numbers of asylum seekers, alongside state and government neglect of their community. They usually are looking to reverse decisions made by the government, and so the intended audience for their demonstrations is the government itself. As a result, for these protestors, it is important to appear reasonable and non-prejudiced in order to legitimate their cause and hence are eager to avoid being labelled xenophobic or racist. At protests in the north inner-city Dublin area of East Wall, for example, a representative of the local residents’ group began a speech by insisting that race was not an issue and that the East Wall was in fact a diverse, multicultural community, which protestors valued. He continued, however, to insist that the real issue for protestors was that ‘they put 150 men in this building without consultation. No politician came to us, nobody spoke to us, and they snuck them in in the middle of the night’ (Moore, 2022b). Another participant who took part in the demonstrations that took place on Aungier Street in central Dublin, explained ‘We had no consultation about this whatsoever. We probably wouldn’t be out protesting if people sat down with us, had a community meeting, and told us that they want to put people in here and help us out’ (McGreevy, 2023).

At the same time however, these protesters often explained they were motivated by concerns about crime, particularly against women and children, which in themselves could be undergirded by racist/culturalist assumptions, as they discursively link young male asylum seekers with such crime. Preference instead is sometimes expressed for European, primarily Ukrainian, refugees as these are mostly women and children and hence viewed as less threatening. The East Wall protestor quoted above, for example, went on to highlight the fact that none of the refugees being brought into his area was Ukrainian, but rather younger men from other parts of the world and hence was worried about the safety of children and elderly residents in his community (Moore, 2022b).

When it came to concerns about resource scarcity, us vs. them and insider/outsider dichotomies were clearly present, with many examples reporting nationalistic slogans such as ‘house the Irish, not the world’, ‘Irish Lives Matter’ and ‘Ireland is full’, or pleas to ‘look after our own first’. One woman participating in the East Wall protests explained, ‘Our own can’t even get the dole. They’re means-tested. They’re not able to afford to rent any property that's out there for them now. There's nothing for our own, but yet they’re taking all these (asylum seekers) in and I’m doing this and that, and our homeless sleeping on the streets freezing?’ (Moore, 2002a). Another man participating in the same demonstration took issue with the idea that the protests were motivated by racism or prejudice, yet went on to explain, that, ‘Anyone that knows their Irish history knows that the people of Ireland that went abroad to other countries, we built the other countries. We didn’t sponge off the states. It wasn’t possible back then as well, so it's not fair for it to happen here’ (Ibid), demonstrating a concern regarding resource stretching, in this case, access to welfare payments, while simultaneously making racist assumptions regarding asylum seekers’ contributions to society.

Far-right involvement in anti-asylum seeker accommodation protests

When it comes to the group we describe as the Far Right, speakers are often not from the local community, but rather, individuals, sometimes with online followings, who travel the country attending demonstrations, purporting to speak on behalf of the silent majority. As a result, they rarely address the specifics of the community in which they are speaking, instead discussing issues in a broader national context, and in some cases, drawing from well-known far-right-inspired international conspiracy theories. Explicit themes of foreignisation, ethnic substitution and the threat of the Global South were common among this group, as were claims that Ireland was being subject to a ‘new plantation’. This latter concept discursively links contemporary immigration to Ireland and the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory current in far-right discourse, whereby ‘elites’ plot to replace natives with immigrants, to the confiscations in the 16th and 17th centuries by the English Crown of large tracts of Catholic-owned land on the island and its settlement by Protestants from Britain. One speaker, for example, told the crowd at an East Wall demonstration, ‘This is it. You are being replaced. You go and try to get a hospital appointment. How long are you waiting? Well, you’re going to be waiting longer from now on’ (Bray, 2002) while another asserted that ‘there's a plan to replace the Irish’ (Ibid).

While such far-right protestors may be looking to grow their movement at such anti-asylum seeker accommodation demonstrations, for most ‘moderates’, this messaging is not always welcome. Throughout the dataset, there were 39 examples coded as incidents in which moderate demonstrators were trying to distance themselves from the far-right fringes. At protests in the rural town of Inch in County Clare, for example, one anti-asylum seeker accommodation demonstrator complained about having to drive away two non-locals with ‘Nazi Flags’ who had tried to join their roadblock, explaining ‘we don’t want that here. We’re not right wing or racist or anything else, and don’t want that coming in here. We can look after ourselves’ (O’Connor, 2023). Similarly, a participant in the demonstrations that took place in the north county Dublin suburb of Santry made it clear that they were not a supporter of the far right identified Irish National Party, despite taking part in the same protest, explaining, ‘We have nothing … to do with the National Party, nothing whatsoever […] We can’t stop people from coming here, but we have no affiliation’ (Lally, 2023).

Protests in support of asylum seeker accommodation

Among the pro-asylum seeker counter-demonstrators, a smaller set, the three most common codes were found to be complaints about the government (20 quotes), representing the ‘real’ Ireland/community as welcoming (19), and demonstrating values such as solidarity with asylum seekers (16). The motivations of the pro-asylum seeker demonstrators, as such, remain largely as described in the literature, although our analysis found that political, that is criticism of the Irish government’s handling of asylum seekers, rather than humanitarian motivations, were more prominent. Hence, there is considerable overlap between motivations of the moderate anti-asylum seeker accommodation protestors and those supporting asylum seeker accommodation, particularly around the unsuitability of sites, the lack of consultation between government and community on the issue and the scarcity of resources in the local area. However, while both are critical of the government, the pro-asylum seeker protestors acknowledge that even if the accommodation being offered is unsuitable, it is preferable to no accommodation at all for asylum seekers.

For example, at a protest in the town of Lismore, County Waterford, one pro-asylum seeker accommodation demonstrator acknowledged the inadequacy of the accommodation being provided, but conceded it was understandable given the scale of the crisis, ‘We … hate direct provision [referring to the Irish state's long-standing policy of using privately provided accommodation for asylum seekers], but the situation is such that … last year … 15,000 International Protection applicants came into Ireland – almost five times the numbers that came in each year from 2017 to 2019. So, the Government has an emergency on its hands’ (Roche, 2023). At the same time, they were often sympathetic to those protesting against the accommodation, although they felt this anger was misplaced. As one pro-accommodation protestor put it in Dublin's East Wall, ‘The frustrating thing is that some of the points the protesters make I 100% agree with. There should be more housing. Irish people shouldn’t be living on the streets. But if they want to march for that I’ll march with them to the Dáil. This is a case of misplaced anger’ (Freyne, 2023).

Conclusions: Dichotomies and commonalities between protestor groups: Ideas for future research

From this brief overview of research findings, we can make four key observations relevant for future research. First, while protests we covered in the research were regarding the siting of accommodation for asylum seekers, the protests were also informed by, and often merged into, wider concerns about immigration into Ireland. At the same time, however, the focus on asylum seekers and the Irish state's International Protection System, makes this group particularly vulnerable to protest and any subsequent negative state action. It is a challenge for researchers to attempt to keep them analytically separate while recognising the extensive overlap between both themes in people's minds.

Second, previous research we reviewed shows similar patterns of far-right involvement, including the circulation of far-right tropes almost identical to those we are seeing in Ireland today. Notably, however, this review included examples of research carried out before the widespread diffusion of social media, including in Ireland (Peillon, 2002) and the United Kingdom (Grillo, 2005; Hubbard, 2005). This suggests that although social media can supercharge the circulation of far-right myths, it is not the only or even chief culprit for these ideas gaining currency. Any meaningful intervention, therefore, will need to go beyond increased surveillance and censorship of online spaces. Research should explore more accurately the precise role of social media in circulating such xenophobic and racist myths among such protestors in a more in-depth manner and how this interacts with more deep-rooted structural racism in Irish society expressed in more traditional manners.

Third, it was found that the same motivations can be expressed by different speakers, from groups that are typically framed as being in opposition to one another. For example, as we have seen, those protesting against asylum seeker accommodation were sometimes worried about asylum seekers’ welfare, while those supporting asylum seekers frequently shared concerns about stretched services and lack of consultation raised by anti-asylum seeker protestors. This may be demonstrative of the complex nature of these debates, which is exacerbated by a discursive vacuum that heretofore existed around immigration in the Irish context (Fanning, 2021: 119, 125). This vacuum was easily exploited by a small number of far-right agitators who are eager to set the parameters of this debate in polarising terms. The nuances and contradictions of such apparently dichotomous thinking deserve more detailed research.

Fourth, the shared concern about the scarcity of resources between those who support and oppose migration and asylum raises questions about how resources generated by immigration are distributed. Irish politicians and business leaders frequently point to the benefits that immigration brings to the Irish economy. Research suggests, however, that immigration tends to benefit the affluent more than average or low-income groups (De Haas, 2023: 225–227). Yet it is overwhelmingly the latter who host new immigrant communities, usually in a context of scarce, consistently underfunded services and severe housing shortages, issues which began long before the arrival of these latest asylum seekers (Hearne, 2023). Research could seek to delve further into the nexus between protestor concerns for community welfare and the demographic, economic and structural impact of immigration on those communities.

This task is particularly urgent considering that posterior to our research period, subsequent protests sometimes degenerated into violence, such as the appalling race-motivated riots in central Dublin on November 23, 2023, as well as a string of, at the time of writing, unsolved arson attacks on mooted asylum seeker accommodation sites throughout the country. It is important that any future research not only helps us understand these protest phenomena and the sudden upsurge in public concern about immigration (see Cunningham, 2023), but also it helps prevent the traditional discursive vacuum about the issue in the country from becoming a sharply polarised, discursive vortex, as has become the case in other European countries. We conclude that, based on this research, a pathway to ensure this may be for researchers to explore more deeply the nexus between the distributive inequalities of immigration affecting local communities and the use by the far right of racist and xenophobic tropes to rationalise those inequalities among those communities. Such research may help blunt the impact of one of the most persuasive and commonplace talking points the far-right exploits in these protests, thereby helping vulnerable communities become more resilient to such far-right messaging.