A year after the worst far-right riots in recent British history, anti-migrant sentiments have not defused—as seen in protests regarding asylum hotels in Epping and Canary Wharf. Instead, data shows that anti-migrant language (such as calls for forced mass deportations of individuals with migrant backgrounds) are rife online. 

This analysis based on data from X (formerly Twitter) found that anti-migrant posts from both domestic and transnational actors have significantly increased in recent years. There was a more than 90 percent increase from 2023 to 2024. The number of anti-migrant posts found in the first six months of 2025 was almost the same as the previous year. Common narratives identified in our data set portray migrants from non-white countries as being dirty, alien and incapable of assimilating into British culture.  

This analysis explores the prevalence of specific terms among those sharing anti-migrant content and messages as well as their growing popularity online. It demonstrates that anti-migrant sentiment has continued to grow post Southport, including the use of conspiratorial and extremist language.  

Key findings 

• Anti-migrant discourse targeting the UK skyrocketed in 2024, with a 90 percent increase in mentions year on year. In the first six months of 2025, there were 1.7M posts, almost as many as in the whole of 2024. 
• More than 300,000 posts featured anti-migrant narratives in August 2024, when major riots took place across the UK following the Southport stabbing attack. Anti-migrant language which referred to the attack or its aftermath peaked and fell in the same month.  
• Narratives portraying the UK as under “invasion” by migrants appeared in more than a quarter of posts, while references to “replacement” appeared in more than 10 percent. 
• More than 76,000 posts in 2025 contained calls for the UK to enact remigration, a far-right term for mass deportations of both migrants and citizens of non-British heritage. Close to a fifth of these posts were from accounts located in the US, reflecting the importance of transnational networks to anti-migrant narratives. 

Methodology 

The social media monitoring tool Brandwatch was used to capture posts from X which mentioned anti-migrant language. This was achieved through a query searching for language describing invasions, replacement and (supportive) calls for mass deportations of migrants. This was combined with keywords related to the UK (including Britain, England, London, Birmingham and others). 

The process was iterated to remove as many examples as possible which were unrelated: for example, “wiped out” and “replaced” were often used in unrelated contexts; “pitch invasion” was used in the context of football. Sample tests also revealed words related to conflicts (such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine) which were excluded. Terms related to irregular migration (such as “illegal immigrant”) were also excluded to avoid wrongly capturing legitimate discussions about policies. Given that such posts may have included other anti-migrant narratives, these results are likely to provide a conservative estimate of the overall volume of content.  

This approach allowed for more granular searches of specific terms with a focus on anti-migrant voices—for example, searches in relation to the post-Southport rioting which came from anti-migrant actors. 

Common narratives: Invasions and replacement 

Data from January 2023 until August 2024 shows steady increases in the use of anti-migrant discourse. From this data, it is not clear if fewer anti-migrant posts were published in the earlier period, or if moderation efforts were more stringent.  

The first major spike was in August 2024 during and after the riots following the Southport stabbing (explored in more detail below). A second spike occurred in March-April 2025 in which the most successful posts focused on the ideas that non-white migration to the UK was an “invasion”. It is unclear why mentions tailed off after January although it may reflect the changing use of keywords. 

Across the whole period, the most popular mentions came from a range of actors but broadly focused on the idea that migrants are dangerous, dirty and must be deported to save Britain and (white) British culture. Over a million posts using terms such as “invasion”, “invader” and “invaded” appeared in the dataset, accounting for a quarter of mentions across the period. The second most popular post in the overall dataset came from a British anti-migrant activist in the first quarter of 2025 and made explicit reference to “an invasion”. It received more than 72,000 likes and 21,000 retweets. 

477,000 posts—more than 10 percent of the dataset—included references to replacement. This included explicit and implicit references to the Great Replacement—a far-right, often antisemitic conspiracy theory that mass migration from non-white countries is a plan to undermine Western states. The most successful of these posts was made in the first quarter of 2025; it came from an influencer account which claims that changes in London’s demographics amount to “replacement”. Their post received 36,000 likes and 8,200 retweets. This data points to both the scale of anti-migrant hate and its growing salience in the UK.  

Southport: Stabbing attack, riots and “two-tier” policing  

On 29 July 2024, a stabbing attack at a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance party in Southport, Merseyside, killed three young girls and injured several more. The attack was perpetrated by a then 17-year old boy, seemingly motivated by a nihilistic worldview and a desire to commit violence for the sake of violence rather than a specific ideology. 

The attack led to riots across the UK, beginning with protests targeting the Southport Mosque (based on misinformation that the attacker was Muslim). At its most extreme, the far-right mobilisation included attempts to burn down two hotels housing asylum seekers, as well as alleged “race checkpoints” where rioters questioned drivers about their ethnicity. On Telegram, a neo-Nazi channel created in the wake of the Southport stabbing circulated a list of immigration lawyers, leading to mass police deployment (although riots did not materialise at these locations).  

All of the top 10 posts by engagement in August 2024 were related to the Southport attack, the subsequent riots, or allegations that migrants receive gentler treatment as part of a “two-tier” policing system. The most popular tweet came from an account which states that it is based in the US, promoting a conspiracy theory that unknown individuals had “paid to get [the attacker] to England” (the attacker was born in the UK). The post received more than 25,000 likes and almost 7,000 retweets. Other Southport-related posts discussed Muslim groups which responded to far-right violence, using them to reframe anti-migrant rioters as “white British patriots” defending their communities against Muslim “mobs”. 

However, as seen in Figure 2, posts containing anti-migrant sentiment with specific mentions for terms related to Southport largely fell after August 2024. There was a significantly smaller spike in March and June 2025 related to perceptions that the government was being unfairly lenient on minorities and engaging in “two-tier” policing.  

It is impossible to ignore that Southport was a high-water mark for on-the-ground far-right mobilisation, after the decline of earlier organisations such as the English Defence League (EDL). Nevertheless, the data highlighted in the previous section suggests that online anti-migrant sentiment is significantly more generalised: that Southport-related terms generally declined while overall anti-migrant narratives rose suggests that they are a part of a broader backdrop of these narratives. While concepts such as two-tier policing have maintained more significance over time, they remain a small part of the discourse that treats non-white migrants as a threat to ‘White Britain’. 

Remigration: Rising calls for mass deportations 

Remigration is a call for the full-scale and typically forced deportation of (typically non-white) citizens of migrant origin as well as migrants and refugees. The term became popularised by the far-right Identitarian Movement but has become increasingly mainstream; in spring 2019, the Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) party in Germany included remigration in its official European elections manifesto. In May, the Trump Administration announced plans for an Office of Remigration repurposing the existing Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. 

There has been less exploration of the remigration narrative in the British context, despite a number of rallies held in 2025 in support of the concept including in Birmingham and Nuneaton. To assess this term, the Brandwatch query was used to search specifically for mentions of remigration which also included geographical terms such as UK, Great Britain and England.  

Figure 3. Calls for remigration on X in the UK context. 

From a starting point of almost zero in 2023, usage of the term quickly climbed to more than 39,000 total mentions in 2024. Although the first sudden increase appeared in August 2024, the peak of the year was in September. The most popular posts on X came from non-British accounts including a US-based white nationalist leader, a US-based white nationalist podcast host, and a far-right Portuguese account. One prominent tweet from a British far-right political candidate described the UK as an “Islamist shithole” due to mass migration, and received 34,000 likes and more than 5,000 reposts.  

Discussions of remigration have intensified in 2025. There were more than 76,000 in the first six months of the year, almost twice as many mentions as the whole of 2024. The first spike in the year in March 2025 appeared to be driven by a ‘remigration rally’ that month in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. The most popular post about remigration so far in 2025, which received 14,300 likes and 2,900 reposts, referenced this rally. Other significant posts in March 2025 include a senior member of a far-right British party calling for remigration in reference to Leicester (where white Britons are a minority); the X account of an extreme-right British party calling for “remigration centres”; and a post from a far-right Belgian activist blaming asylum seekers for litter in the UK.  

The final and largest spike took place in May 2025 and was linked to a second remigration rally in Birmingham. Eight of the top 10 mentions referred to it, including a post from a leader of a British far-right party which organised the march. Of the other posts which mentioned remigration, one called for “total remigration” in response to a man of Pakistani origin being charged with killing 37 dogs, receiving 16,700 likes and 2,100 reposts.  

The transnationality of discourse is evident in Brandwatch data. Posts from the UK made up 61 percent of all those mentioning remigration followed by the US (17 percent), Canada (3 percent), and Australia and Germany (both 2 percent). This percentage varied over months—in August, for example, only one of the top 10 mentions was British while nine out of 10 were in September. This reflects the ways in which transnational far-right actors use the UK to support calls for remigration from across Western countries, while domestic actors seize on these narratives to situate themselves into a broader struggle. 

Conclusion 

Debate about anti-migrant trends in the UK have typically focused on single events (such as the Southport stabbing and ensuring riots) or political statements (such as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s speech about migration and fears of the UK becoming “an island of strangers”). This analysis demonstrates that anti-migrant narratives are part of a broader and continuous effort to present non-white individuals as fundamentally threatening, alien and irreconcilable with British norms and culture.  

These narratives have been given additional life by ongoing clashes in Epping. However, it is important not to treat these individual events as isolated. Instead, they form part of a steady flow of narratives that imagine immigrants and asylum seekers (legal and irregular) as an ‘invasion’ undermining British identity and culture. Anti-migrant actors use these narratives to create greater polarisation and convince others that extreme acts of retaliation are warranted and required to ‘save’ the country. The spike in posts calling for remigration is evidence of this: these calls are often framed as a ‘necessary’ act to ensure that Britain continues to persist rather than being transformed into an alien state. 

The data also points to the significance of transnational anti-migrant voices in the conversation (as seen in ISD’s research into the post-Southport stabbing riots). These actors use the UK and the supposed evils of non-white migration as a clarion call for supporters in other locations. At the same time, these narratives provide additional momentum to British anti-migrant voices. To fully understand and address the surge in anti-migrant narratives means looking beyond borders and specific events.