Channel 4's Go Back To Where You Came From shows the lack of empathy in Britain right now

The provocative documentary examining Britain’s attitudes towards immigration, makes one thing clear: we face a serious empathy crisis.

Go Back To Where You Came From goes inside young people’s perceptions on immigration Pic: Channel 4

Go Back to Where You Came From, a provocative new four-part series examining Britain’s attitudes towards immigration, makes one thing clear: we in the Global North face a serious empathy crisis. The documentary takes six “opinionated Brits” to some of the world’s most war-torn regions, such as Syria and Somalia, in the hope of challenging their hard-line views and offering first-hand experience of what it’s like for people forced to flee their homes.

Despite airing just one episode, Channel 4 has already stirred controversy. Critics have pointed to the casting of four individuals with openly bigoted views on migration and accused the show of giving racism and xenophobia a platform.

The opening episode wastes no time courting outrage, featuring a participant who suggests the Royal Navy should plant landmines to blow up small boats, likening refugees to “rats” who keep coming if you leave food out. Regardless of whether you believe the show should have been aired, it pulls back the curtain on the real issue around immigration: a troubling absence of shared humanity and compassion.

Regardless of whether you believe the show should have been aired, it pulls back the curtain on the real issue around immigration: a troubling absence of shared humanity and compassion.

The format of the series divides the six British participants into two trios, sending one group to Somalia and the other to Syria. Each group represents a spectrum of attitudes toward refugees: one participant sympathetic to the plight of refugees, another who is potentially persuadable, and a third who is very resistant to the experience, playing the role of a contrarian (your average Union Jack-in-bio hard-right talking head).

In this way, the show, which draws much of its structure from the Australian original, deliberately sets up contrasting perspectives to fuel interpersonal drama.

As expected, the Brits experience a real culture shock exploring the cities of Mogadishu and Raqqa. Dave, mistakes the shouts of a Syrian street-vendor selling tomatoes for a suicide bomber. Nathan, a business-owner from Barnsley, describes Somalia’s capital as a “zombie apocalypse” and a “s***hole”, suggesting that immigration is going to make England “look like this in 10 years time”.

Chloe, a GB News commentator, makes a similar comment about Raqqa being a “complete mess” and there being “rubbish all over the ground”. Why can’t these impoverished, traumatised citizens of war-torn cities, who are regularly killed by militant groups, just clean the whole place up? they both wonder.

When the group in Somalia go to an internally displaced people (IDP) camp, we are shown what is perhaps the most revealing moment in the whole episode. There, they meet an aid worker and a survivor of sexual violence. Jess, from a small village in Wales, describes the experience as “another world.”

Her throwaway comment, while instinctive, pinpoints to the crux of the issue of a polarised Britain: these participants cannot comprehend that no, this isn’t another world – it’s our world. The inability to grasp the proximity of global poverty and violence, as well as our interconnectedness to it, despite witnessing it first-hand, highlights the deep alienation some people in the UK feel toward the ‘rest of the world’.

Yet instead of instilling empathy, these harsh realities make most of the participants double down on their views, reinforcing isolationism over compassion. At the end of their time in Mogadishu, Jess shares that her concerns around immigration are tied to her family’s financial struggles. “We are on the breadline. I’m suffering myself. If there were people here who wanted to come over. I’d still say no, it’s not my problem,” she says.

What is an opportunity for a shared economic struggle instead becomes a reaffirmation of the "us vs. them" mentality, painting migration as some sort of zero-sum game. We know it’s not: especially when immigration contributes approximately £83 billion to the UK's economic output every year. Not fact-checking some of the incorrect claims and assertions made by the participants with the narrator's voiceover is a missed opportunity for the programme. The producers could have offered viewers a far more informed perspective rather than letting xenophobic narratives go unchallenged.

It’s difficult to watch a programme like this without feeling a deep sense of unease. The participants’ inability to see humanity in the people they encounter speaks to the profound levels of dehumanisation at the core of their views. Jess’s horrified reaction to the stories of Somali women and girls, while initially promising, is quickly undercut by her sweeping comments about Somali men’s “mindset”. Her grim conclusion, that refugee men coming to the UK could be “rapists or paedophiles”, neatly sidesteps the fact that structural violence often victimises boys and men too, whether through physical harm or economic hardship.

Chloe’s remarks are similarly alarming. Standing before children forced to scavenge plastic in a bombed-out city to help their family survive, she jokes about the “entrepreneurial kick” they must be getting from the task. It’s hardly surprising that someone who voices their fears of Britain being “a hell-hole full of people wearing burqas” cannot show these vulnerable and starved children any real empathy.

Yet amid this bleakness, Dave, a chef from Nottingham, the one who once likened refugees to vermin and publicly supported Reform UK before the last general election, offers a faint flicker of hope.

His ignorance appears rooted more in a limited worldview than outright malice, having travelled abroad only twice. But confronted by the sight of children scavenging through rubbish - children the same age as his daughter - Dave seems transformed. Afterward in the car, he cries, his voice trembling as he asks why no one is helping them. He even jokes, half-seriously, about bringing two of the boys back with him.

In a rare moment of genuine compassion, he goes to the market, buys fresh produce, and cooks a proper meal for their family - one with meat. It's a small act, but one that fills the viewer with hope. And yet, as the credits roll, you’re left wondering just how much of this brief, heart-warming encounter will remain with him. Will it stay in his mind when he returns home to the same dehumanising narratives about asylum seekers and refugees?

About the author: Diyora is a multimedia journalist, writer, and editor based in London. She was previously a Senior Editor at The Lead and her work has appeared in The Guardian, VICE, The Independent, DAZED, Huck Magazine, THE FACE, and more. She is the co-founder of hothouse book club, a digital and IRL book club that champions a climate justice perspective.

Immigration, and an informed debate around it, is a topic we cover on The Lead - as well as tracking the rise of the new far-right in The Drift. From debunking mistruths around grooming gangs, to a documentary which exposed the new frontline against the far-right in British politics and why attacks on multiculturalism are an attack on us all.