The Reception of The Rwanda Asylum Plan in The British and Hungarian Press

Abstract

On 14 April 2022, UK and Rwandan leaders signed the UK and Rwanda Migration and Economic Development Partnership, which aims to relocate a proportion of illegal migrants arriving in the UK through the Channel to Rwanda, so that the asylum claim process can continue there. According to the British leadership, the plan is being set up because of years of mounting migration pressure. Although the process is still in its experimental phase, the adjective “controversial” has been associated with the plan in British and Rwandan domestic politics and media almost from day one. The current press analysis processes the events, the legal, political and economic developments related to the plan, the opinions of various online right- and left-wing media outlets in the UK and Hungary, the ways and means of approaching the plan, the sources they use and cite, and compares the complexity, accuracy, credibility and bias of the articles. Events are tracked through articles written between April 2022 and February 2023, the genre of these articles being largely news, reports and news summaries. To determine the political orientation of UK news portals, we have used tables from Ad Fontes Media and AllSides, as well as statistics from YouGov.