Abstract
One understudied area of adult education and lifelong learning is the role of media as educator and policy player. This article describes how the authors used critical discourse analysis to examine how asylum seekers, migrant workers and their advocates have challenged long-standing discursive framings of them as benefactors of Canadian generosity, criminals, burdens or victims – during the first ten months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis points to the difficulties of navigating media engagement to advocate for individuals facing deportation from Canada, while also attempting to challenge the dichotomy of people seen either as worthy of dignity (those who work for low pay and in dangerous conditions to care for Canadians) or as unworthy (those who work on farms or who are not able to work). However, it also reveals the potential for critical lifelong media education to inform the work of adult educators across classroom, labour and social movement contexts to disrupt exclusionary and oppressive media and government narratives.
Highlights
Résumé Le cadrage médiatique et gouvernemental des demandeurs d’asile et des travailleurs migrants au Canada pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 – Le rôle d’éducateur et d’acteur politique des médias est un domaine peu étudié de l’éducation des adultes et de l’apprentissage tout au long de la vie
The first part of our findings focuses on how the Canadian government and politicians represented asylum seekers and migrant workers, and how media covered these statements
The second part of our findings focuses on how asylum seekers and migrant workers challenged these representations through their lived experience
Summary
Résumé Le cadrage médiatique et gouvernemental des demandeurs d’asile et des travailleurs migrants au Canada pendant la pandémie de COVID-19 – Le rôle d’éducateur et d’acteur politique des médias est un domaine peu étudié de l’éducation des adultes et de l’apprentissage tout au long de la vie. When I asked teachers what they knew about the context of their students, they repeated negative media coverage about Somalis It became clear how they had constructed ideas about their students based not on experience with people from a region or by reading authors from the region but from media accounts. I was keenly aware that the stories I was reading and listening to in the legacy [traditional] media did not represent the complex experiences of the women I worked with. It left me wondering how media engage with migrants, whose stories are being told, why certain stories are told and who is telling them. The Discourse [an alternative online media publication], journalists, 30 new asylum seekers and migrants to Canada, settlement workers and academics developed a toolkit offering tips and guidance for refugees interested in sharing their perspectives, and for journalists who want to do a better job of talking about refugees
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