(Non) representation and normalized losses of the other in pro-migrant media texts: what is at stake in migrant visibility?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether and how media texts that explicitly support migrants and their settlement in Greece may echo racist assumptions. Our main claim is that the texts examined here overrepresent a “tolerable” and “familiar Other”, in contrast to some “vague” and “threatening Others”, who are largely minimized (i.e. deprived of agency, face and name). They remain at the margins of visibility and are not tolerated, while their foreclosure and loss emerge as normal. The racist underpinnings of this process are deconstructed on the basis of two theoretical axes: (a) that discourses of tolerance may be permeated by a liquid fear of the Other and fail to recognize migrants beyond the racist stereotype of the “Other as a threat” and (b) that this convergence of tolerance and fear takes place implicitly and can be studied in terms of what is silenced in discoursal representation of tolerance. Our analysis will draw upon a conceptual framework for the study of the (non) representation of migrants, based on the notions of recognition and abjection, in combination with linguistic/semiotic tools proposed by van Leeuwen.