‘I think they’re the real villains in all of this’: crimmigrant visuality and representations of people smuggling in state use of Twitter/X

Although a growing body of research highlights the convergence of humanitarianism and border policing, little attention has been paid to the importance of the visual field in constructing these discourses. This paper advances the concept of ‘crimmigrant visuality’ to underline the importance of visual representations in the theatre of border control in the United Kingdom (UK). Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis of the UK Home Office and National Crime Agency’s use of Twitter/X, I argue that visual representations of ‘people smugglers’ and ‘criminal gangs’ make crimmigrant others visible in political discourse as ‘worthy enemies’. To achieve this, I consider how images of the ‘crimmigrant other’ – such as ‘mugshots’ or footage from immigration raids – are juxtaposed with discourses of migrant suffering and vulnerability to provide a humanitarian rationale for border control.