Exploring how entertainment documentaries construct London to account for the residence of the international super-rich in the “hostile environment” for migrants

Philippa Carr; Simon Goodman; Adam Jowett; Jackie Abell

doi:10.1080/14780887.2025.2525856

Exploring how entertainment documentaries construct London to account for the residence of the international super-rich in the “hostile environment” for migrants

Philippa Carr
, Simon Goodman
, Adam Jowett
, Jackie Abell

Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience

University of the West of England
De Montfort University
University of Law

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

56 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Unlike poorer migrant groups, governments offer visa inducements to attract wealthy individuals into a country. However, super-rich migrants’ impact on the UK has been shown to be negative. This research explored how entertainment documentaries account for super-rich individuals residing in London. Discursive Social Psychology was used to analyse 2490 min of programmes from non-subscription UK terrestrial channels broadcast throughout 2016 in the UK using the term ‘super-rich’. Within the programmes, London was constructed as a (1) playground, (2) safe space and (3) place of economic opportunity. The super-rich were positioned as good migrants who have integrated into society. By drawing upon human rights arguments within the broadcasts, London was constructed as a safe haven. The construction of super-rich migrants formed a stark contrast to poorer groups who contribute more to the economy yet are targeted by hostile immigration policy and media reporting.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	529-553
Number of pages	25
Journal	Qualitative Research in Psychology
Volume	23
Issue number	3
Early online date	30 Jun 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/14780887.2025.2525856
Publication status	Published - 3 Jul 2026

Bibliographical note

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)or with their consent.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

SDG 1 No Poverty
SDG 10 Reduced Inequalities
SDG 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

Keywords

discursive social psychology
migration
super-rich
television
Wealth inequality

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Psychology(all)
Social Sciences(all)
Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)

Access to Document

10.1080/14780887.2025.2525856Licence: CC BY

Abell2025VoRFinal published version, 551 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Exploring how entertainment documentaries construct London to account for the residence of the international super-rich in the “hostile environment” for migrants

Abstract

Bibliographical note

UN SDGs

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Access to Document

Other files and links

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