Go Back to Where You Came From: a provocative series or an exploitative disaster?

Channel 4’s recent reality series Go Back to Where You Came From stars “six opinionated Brits”, splitting them into two group, placing three people in Raqqa, Syria, and three in Mogadishu, Somalia. The goal: to have them travel the route many refugees take to the UK, to see if they will become more or less sympathetic to asylum-seekers. Based on an Australian show of the same name, Channel 4’s version contains warnings for racism, heated arguments, and dramatic scenes of car searches, bomb scares, and travel by small boat — all with 24 hour security in place, of course. So, does this show achieve what it sets out to, or does it get so caught up in sensationalising the Brits’ experience that it forgets the realities for refugees?

Participant Mathilda, who supported asylum-seekers’ right to come to the UK from the start of the journey, has suggested that she had her “fiercest arguments” with crew members, not the rest of the cast, and that a lot of what she had to say was cut. Despite this, she believes that the show was a success. By platforming a cast with a majority staunchly against asylum-seekers (perceived as illegal migrants), Go Back to Where You Came From refused to suggest that there is or was a bias towards refugees in its casting or its messaging.

Instead, it shows viewers who want to close our borders that mainstream media is unable to holistically depict the journey of a refugee, and that the issue is much more nuanced than participants may have initially understood. Three of the four cast members who were deeply troubled by the arrival of refugees on British land came to realise that asylum-seekers are a diverse group with many reasons for travelling, and changed their minds on the immigration issue.

Ultimately, if the show was comprised of six people open to refugees, no one who is sceptical of immigration would watch it. These cast members’ minds weren’t changed by people calling them racist or from subscribing to a more diverse range of media, but by meeting refugees and experiencing compassion for them.

That is not to say, however, that the show is not an extremely difficult watch. It is incredibly difficult to see how some people are forced to live, of course, but it is also incredibly frustrating to see such harsh reactions from some cast members, outbursts had in front of the incredibly vulnerable people who are agreeing to meet them and speak with them.

One cast member storms around a marketplace, calls it a “shithole”, and wonders why the community isn’t litter-picking instead of worrying about Al-Shabaab; another cast member, Chloe, openly states that children rummaging through rubbish under the baking-hot sun for plastic to sell must be “getting an entrepreneurial kick out of it” and wonders why everyone is so worried about people injured by bombs, who are “just” experiencing “pressure and maybe a bit of metal”. Chloe did not change her stance by the end of the show.

Now, “opinionated” is a pretty generous way to refer to a cast who reiterate some Islamophobic sentiments and repeatedly suggest that refugees are likely paedophiles or rapists. There is also the question of whether the show’s very premise is an absolute failure to refugee communities: it is accused of white saviourism, as only one cast member comes from migrant heritage, though its supporters have pointed again to the fact that it needs to have cast members representative of immigration critics to encourage like-minded people to even watch.

Either way, it commodifies asylum-seekers’ journeys, placing participants in sites of unrest and telling them their experience is authentic, while providing them with 24/7 security. Its title, and the views it platforms (even if the people claiming “Islam will take over” change their minds) have also been called harmful.