The article draws on a report we published this week migzen.net/site/assets/...
Given the degree of hostility towards migrants, both responses should be welcome, & there is room for building solidarity. FT has published a story that triggers empathy among their readers,perhaps they could do more to expand the range of #migration stories 'we' feel empathy for.
... but, as in the social media age stories travel beyond usual readership, the story also triggers a response: 'oh that's stupid, they are attacking their owns'...
It is a story that speaks to what they imagine to be their readership (probably accurately), to trigger a response like: 'Oh, that's horrible, it could be me'...
Because those affected are Americans, white, Churchgoers, Oxford DPhil students, all positionalies we normally associate to power.
...Why do FT & many of its readers (consciously & unconsciously) think that this, among the thousands of people affected by the cruelty of the new immigration rules, is particularly compelling?
But there is also another way to read it, which doesn't make the immigration rules less inhumane but raises some flags.
There is a deep disconnect between what they say and what they know. The whole Rwanda thing has little to do with managing migration.