Political mobilisation and public discourse in new immigrant destinations: news media characterisations of immigrants during the 2006 immigration marches

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn 2006, millions of immigrants engaged in boycotts and marches for immigrant rights. Many of these protests occurred in new destinations, places with little prior history of collective mobilisation by non-citizens. We focus on the U.S. South, a region noteworthy for the recent, unprecedented growth in its non-citizen population and its unexpected role in the 2006 protests. Drawing from a unique dataset of immigration-related news stories from ten newspapers across the South from 2005 to 2007, we examine variation in public immigration discourse during this ‘unsettled’ period of heightened political mobilisation and marked public anxiety around immigration. We supplement this analysis with a close examination of immigration news coverage in English and Spanish-language newspapers in South Carolina. Regional analysis reveals minimal shifts in public immigration discourse during this time period; however, the South Carolina case study reveals subtle yet noteworthy variation in the cultural categories used to label immigrants, the moral characterisations of immigrants, and the salience of the immigrant-native boundary. The English-language press increasingly portrayed immigrants from Mexico as cultural threats. After the marches, the Spanish-language press emphasised immigrants’ work ethic. These findings have implications for our understanding of social dynamics in new destinations and the cultural dimensions of political mobilisation.