Channel 4’s new refugee reality series should never have been made

As I watched the first episode of Channel 4’s new series Go Back To Where You Came From I couldn’t help but despair at how far the UK has fallen.
Go Back To Where You Came From is based on a successful three-season Australian show which originally aired in 2011.
This new version sees six ‘opinionated’ Brits with varying views on immigration undergo the journey many asylum seekers take to the UK and has been slammed as ‘Place in the Sun’ meets ‘Benefits Street’.
It promises an ‘unflinching look at the truth of immigration’ and a ‘bold and timely’ entry into the ongoing alarmist and increasingly toxic debate around immigration in the UK that has thrown the most vulnerable in our society under the bus.
When I first heard about the series concept I immediately felt uneasy. The idea that the general public needs to see white, born-and-bred Brits who talk and look like them face the trauma that hundreds and thousands of people endure every day to muster a semblance of empathy is… bleak to say the least.
My thoughts were echoed by several online.
As put by Amnesty International, the show is ‘deeply disappointing’ and they rightly call it ‘sensational’ TV.
Steve Smith, chief executive of Care4Calais, echoed: ‘You can’t mimic the experience of war, torture, persecution and modern slavery through the sanitised lens of reality TV.’
It begs the question – are Brits only capable of having their minds changed through a challenge-style reality show?
The show introduces our group of six, split into threes.
In group one, we have British Pakistani Muslim Bushra alongside Dave and Chloe (with the latter two being immigration sceptics) arriving in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Group two has a similar set-up with pro-refugee voice Mathilda journeying across Mogadishu in Somalia with Nathan and Jess, who do not feel the same way.
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What follows is the usual eye-rolling trauma porn – a Western group of travellers poking, prodding and gawping at the local people, in shock at their circumstances and at the ready with their usual quips like calling Mogadishu a ‘s**thole that f**king stinks’.
What we see of the cities is reminiscent of to the news when reporters are sent live on location to war-torn areas where conflict has erupted.
For me, the most glaring omission was the lack of context provided to the cast of the show or viewers about Britain’s historic involvement in these regions.
The RAF has been directly involved in airstrikes in Syria and the UK is an arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, which has a direct involvement in the devastation in places like Yemen (another place which produces millions of refugees).
Does the UK’s involvement, for better or for worse, not warrant some responsibility for the civilians impacted? It’s not a question immediately posed during the first episode.

I felt most uncomfortable watching Bushra, a Pakistani Muslim like myself, thrown into the show as a balanced voice and forced to listen to Islamophobic tirades from her fellow Brits who have conflated several issues to make anyone who doesn’t look like them the enemy.
At one point Dave tells Bushra: ‘Where I’m from, I do say things sometimes like “oh that person’s a Muzzo”, that’s just how we talk’ and when pushed back on it he reiterates ‘it’s only a joke, this is the problem, in Britain, we used to be able to say what we wanted.’
At another, Chloe warns that with unchecked immigration ‘Britain will be a hellhole full of people wearing burqas. Islam will have taken over’ unbothered by the idea of being called ‘racist’.
For anyone tuned into the political atmosphere over the past decade, it is clear to see how we got here. We have Nigel Farage standing in front of billboards of refugees, and using dehumanising language like ‘swarm’.
Just last year he was seen as ‘stoking’ the UK riots, provoked by the tragic murders in Southport, by claiming the ‘truth’ of the perpetrator’s identity was being withheld amid a flurry of conspiracy theories over them being Muslim or an asylum seeker.
Shows like I’m A Celebrity platformmed him. At the time, there was pushback from the other jungle contestants at some of his views, which clearly did nothing to move the public, who not only voted him a runner-up but then made him MP.
I can’t see how this show offers anything different aside from indulging in the exploitation of refugees and feeding into the narrative that everyone must prove their traumatic backstory to give their life any sort of value.
In the first episode, we meet one woman who discusses her forced marriage and difficult experiences, which inspire a few moments of self-reflection from our onlookers. Bravo.

But time and time again the show offers a ready platform for people to happily spew their racist views – reiterating their stance that refugees could be ‘rapists and paedophiles’ and that we’re going to become a backwards Islamic state in the next few years (to name a few).
Hearing the tirades hit close to home, as I am sure will be the case for many Muslims who are already familiar with the derogatory language flung our way. We don’t need a TV show, or a surrogate like Bushra, to remind us of the insults and very real threats we’ve faced for years while going about our day-to-day life.
It is very rare that any kind of rebuttal or reasoning I have tried to offer my attackers in the past has actually changed their minds or made them stop and think.
So it’s difficult to understand who this show is for, and even more troubling to wrap my head around why it is necessary.
Those already on the side of asylum seekers and refugees will not learn anything new.
And while there may be a handful of intolerant people whose eyes may be opened, the fact this style of programme is needed to advocate this message is horrible and perpetuates the idea that our media needs to pander to them.

The occasionally poignant moments in the episode are not enough to paper over the fact that this is dystopian TV at its finest – and a wake-up call that this country has crossed the Rubicon when it comes to intolerance.
There are a handful of other films, shows and documentaries that offer an insight into the life of refugees which seem less trivialising. Amnesty International has a list of powerful short documentaries.
There’s Netflix’s The Swimmers about two Syrian refugees who swam the Mediterranean or movies like For Sama which is available on Channel 4.
As for GBTWYCF, perhaps our four naysayers will be genuinely moved to change their views by the end.
But if cosplaying a perilous boat journey to UK shores on camera is the lengths that they have to go to then, frankly, I don’t care about the self-actualisation of four people who initially seem happy for my family and community to be driven out of the country and people around the world to suffer because of their ill-conceived prejudices.
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