Chapter 6. Discursive legitimation of criminalization and victimization of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spanish El País and ABC newspapers

Abstract

This chapter analyses some visual characteristics used to criminalize and victimize sub-Saharan immigrants in a sample from Spanish press. It contributes to debate on discursive construction of the other, in this case, sub-Saharan immigrant, in quality Spanish press. The corpus consists of all news items published on sub-Saharan immigrants in digital editions of two most popular Spanish newspapers, El Pais and ABC, from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2015. Visual grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) and model proposed by van Leeuwen (1996, 2008) for analysis of representation of social actors is used to deconstruct main visual strategies used by Spanish press to criminalize and victimize immigrants in order to reinforce us-them dichotomy and to legitimize representation of sub-Saharan immigrants as the others. The main findings of study show how immigrants are represented as criminals and victims, which does not favour their integration but contributes to highlighting of racist attitudes and discrimination.