A political campaign poster by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) during the 2016 European Union membership referendum in the United Kingdom.

New UKIP Poster launching today - Breaking Point pic.twitter.com/PjMWSLbBNZ

— UKIP (@UKIP) June 16, 2016

Look at this poster. What message do you think it is designed to get across?

In 2016 Britain held a referendum on whether to remain in the European Union. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) was one political group which campaigned to leave. One of the key issues they raised was immigration. This is a UKIP poster. It claims the United Kingdom must ‘take back control’ of its borders. The picture is of asylum seekers crossing the border between Croatia and Slovenia in 2015. The poster is making the point that the arrival of migrants from the Middle East had not been controlled by other countries in the European Union and suggests that many will enter the United Kingdom. In fact, refugees would only have been able to settle in the United Kingdom once they had become European Union nationals or been granted asylum by the UK.

The posted was criticised by various political leaders for a number of reasons. Firstly, its presents asylum seekers as a large mass of people rather than individuals. When put alongside the message the picture seems to present a message of fear. Some were critical of the poster because it closely resembled a 1930s Nazi propaganda film of Jews. Although it is likely that some people in the poster were Christian, or of other religions, the poster was criticised for fuelling anti-Muslim opinion. Secondly, the image was criticised for playing on the public’s fears of terrorism. Although terror is not alluded to in the poster it was published not long after horrific attacks in Paris and Brussels. These had produced widespread public anxiety about Islamist extremists. Is the picture implying that this crowd is dangerous because it might include terrorists in it? The sociologist Dr Madeline-Sophie Abbas has said the picture in this context ‘depicts “Middle Eastern-looking” refugees’ as security threats and ignores the stories of the individual people.

What message do you think it is trying to get across? Do you agree with these criticisms of the poster?