Representations Of Migrants Research Articles

Beyond infantilization and adultification: The binary representations of child migrants in the United States and how they harm young migrants

AbstractThe arrival of migrant children at the US–Mexico border has prompted vigorous debates about how to handle their admission and manage their access to resources. Portrayals of child migrants often draw on dominant conventional notions of childhood, creating binary representations that simultaneously infantilize and adultify them. This binary representation either strips children of their agency or criminalizes their actions and denies them protection. This paper exposes the inadequacies of the infantilization and adultification binary to represent and understand the experiences of child migrants, particularly youth who immigrate as teenagers, through a transdisciplinary approach. Integrating original historical analysis via archival research with contemporary social scientific analysis from qualitative research, this paper examines the longstanding binary representations of migrant children and their harmful impacts. The historical analysis shows that infantilization and adultification have defined the US response to child migrants since the mid‐1960s. Making connections to the present, through the stories of two unaccompanied teenage arrivals, we show how the binary is experienced and how Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) reflects and reinforces the binary. The paper also highlights how young people, who do not fit neatly into the binary, come to subjectively feel adult, elucidating the need for an alternative narrative that embraces child migrants' agency and advocates for support and protection for all youth.

The representation of sub-Saharan African migrants in the Tunisian written media: a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis

ABSTRACT While the topic of migrant representation in media discourse has been extensively researched, a significant portion of scholarly attention is concentrated on Western media. This focus leaves a considerable gap in the study of media representations in transitional countries, particularly North African nations like Tunisia. This topic assumes greater significance in light of the recent surge in xenophobia towards sub-Saharan African migrants in the country – a movement partly instigated by President Kais Saied's anti-immigrant rhetoric. Utilising Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper examines the discursive representations of sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisian written media discourse, focusing on the 2022 and 2023 anti-migrant wave in Tunisia under the presidency of Kais Saied. The research findings reveal that while a glimpse of a humanitarian discourse was evident, the majority of the discourse was characterised either by biased neutrality or explicit prejudice. The research indicates a predominantly negative representation, categorising migrants as invaders, security threats, economic burdens, and moral hazards. Significantly, much of the discourse echoes the political anti-immigrant policy, suggesting a potential media alignment with the emerging authoritarian tendencies in Tunisia. This alignment harbours damaging implications for the safety and well-being of the migrant community, as well as for the overall human rights and democratisation process in the country.

Online news coverage of migrants’ grief at a distance during COVID-19: A qualitative framing analysis

Grieving at a distance is a common and often challenging experience for migrants. As a result of travel restrictions and border closures, grieving at a distance became a focus of media reporting during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aimed to examine the representation of migrants’ grief at a distance during the pandemic in online newspaper articles. We used a qualitative framing analysis to analyze nine articles published in online international newspapers. Three frames were identified: Grief as an impossible situation, migrants left with impossible choices, and grief as culturally mediated. These frames focused on how the psychological experience of grief was intertwined with migrants’ broader societal and cultural contexts. They emphasized the complex choices migrants faced due to their personal situations and cross-cultural experiences. Findings offer insights into how the media depicts migrant experiences, thus shaping public perceptions of their grief and bereavement. They reveal the difficulties of transnational grief migrants experienced.

Dreamers and caminantes

Migration remains a recurring yet controversial subject in today’s society. Previous research on press discourse has predominantly focused on migration metaphors from their verbal construction (Santa Ana, 1999; O’Brien, 2003) and the interplay with the visual mode in articles (Catalano & Waugh, 2013; Catalano & Mitchell-McCollough, 2019) or political cartoons (El Refaie, 2003). This genre frequently reflects an unfavorable and discriminatory representation of migrants through the lens of the host country. However, children’s picture books addressing this sensitive issue have received little attention despite their pedagogical value for promoting intercultural, positive attitudes at an early age in an increasingly multicultural and multilingual world. Our study aims to examine the metaphorical construction of migration in Yuyi Morales’ picture book Dreamers, combining the cognitive and social semiotic approaches (Forceville, 2016; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006; Painter et al., 2013) to shed light on how both frameworks can complement each other in Critical Discourse Analysis and to demonstrate how children’s picture books can constructively contribute to social change by providing a counterbalancing voice to the dominant narrative on migration.

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

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.

Evaluating the power of social media influencing mainstream media social representations of migrants in South African townships

The relationship between mainstream media and social media for news reporting is a complex one. Mainstream media news is relied on as a source of information on key social issues, carrying and reproducing the social representations of a society. South African townships have been reported as a hotbed of anti-migrant unrest, with the growing reliance on the communities’ lens through their social media representations shared online often considered by mainstream media as authentic sources of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Townships are spaces of contestation for belonging and despite the diversity of those communities, there remains stigmatizing social representation between migrants and citizens, with communities attributing social ills to migrants. This study analyses how social media has influenced the reproduction of social representations in mainstream media of anti-migrant township unrest. Through a qualitative exploratory approach, mainstream news articles were analyzed for how social representations from social media are reproduced in mainstream media reporting. Social media representations reproduced in mainstream media reporting may risk perpetuating communication risks of othering, affect social cohesion in those communities, and fuelling mistrust among citizens and migrants living in South African township communities.

Determinants of Repeating an HIV Test Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who have Sex with Men, and Transgender People Who Use an Online-Requested Self-Sampling Program and Attending Community-Based Testing Venues in Spain (2018-2021).

Our aims were: (1) to characterize gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (GBMSM) and transgender (TG) populations using internet-based self-sampling services in the TESTATE project or attending community-based STI/HIV voluntary counselling and testing (CBVCT) services as alternative strategies to formal HIV testing within the Spanish national health system, and (2) to identify factors associated with repeat use of the same screening strategy from November 2018 to December 2021. Demographic, health, and behavioral characteristics of users using complementary strategies were analyzed. We developed a cross-sectional study, with descriptive analysis, HIV cascade, and a multivariate logistic model to identify factors associated with participants' repeated use of the same screening strategy. We included 9939 users, of whom 94.1% were GBMSM (n = 9348) and 5.9% TG (n = 580), with a high representation of migrants. Reactive results were 3.4% (n = 340), with 3.0% in GBMSM (n = 277/9348) and 10.7% in TG (n = 63/591). 73.8% (n = 251) were confirmed HIV positive and 76.7% (n = 194) were linked to health services. Users repeated the online screening strategy more than CBVCT (44.3% vs. 31.8%), but TG population used face-to-face community services more (8.4% vs. 0.6%). Factors influencing the repetition of the online self-sampling strategy included older age, non-migrant status, and recent HIV testing. In the CBVCT strategy, factors included older age, TG identity, non-migrant status, condom use during the last sexual encounter, and recent HIV testing. In conclusion, both CBVCT and online-requested self-sampling at home are important alternatives to the health system for the provision of HIV testing to GBMSM and TG.

Intersectional solidarity, empathy, or pity? Exploring representations of migrant women in German and British newspapers during the pandemic

ABSTRACT This research examines migrant women’s representation in British and German news during the COVID-19 pandemic, paying particular attention to expressions of solidarity. While previous research has focused on the representation of women and migrants, studies have largely treated these groups as distinct entities. Combining topic modelling with informed grounded theory, this research compares the representation of migrant women, including women from ethnic minorities, across a diverse corpus covering 2020–21. This two-step methodology facilitates intersectional analysis at the macro and micro level, revealing the salience, topical concentration and context of migrant women’s coverage. Findings show that solidarity emerged through the platforming of migrant women’s voices, and connected to discourses of class, poverty and precarity. Representations containing empathy and pity – less likely drivers of social change – were more prevalent. This research contributes to our understanding of migrant women’s coverage during the pandemic and provides a granular and intersectional lens for analysing minoritized group representation.

COVID success? For whom? Examining the political representation of migrants in Taiwan

ABSTRACT Taiwan’s handling of COVID-19 has been seen as a success. Nevertheless, little is known about how the government has considered migrants in its COVID-19 policies. Using a corpus analysis of the legislative speeches of the Taiwanese policymakers between 2020 and 2022, we investigate how migrants are represented in Taiwan’s COVID-19 strategy. Our findings show that policymakers inadequately consider migrants when drawing up emergency measures and restrictions, despite making up of 6.3 per cent of the population. Our findings illustrate that policymakers focus more on migrant workers than migrant spouses and that policymakers demonize migrant workers and victimize migrant spouses. As COVID-19 does not differentiate based on nationality and constituents would want migrants to be represented for their own safety, the study demonstrates how policymakers may accommodate a diverse population beyond their constituents in crises and illuminates ways to create an inclusive society where non-citizens’ health and safety are considered.

Communities of Fear: The Politics of ‘Strangering’ and the Ethics of Resistance in Naima El Bezaz’s Vinexvrouwen

ABSTRACT This article analyses the Moroccan-Dutch author Naima El Bezaz’s novel Vinexvrouwen (Suburban Women), which explores the interplay between the representation of migrants’ cultural difference, the politics of ‘strangering’ and the ethics of resistance. By means of gendered practice of storytelling, the autobiographical novel unfolds the native Dutch people’s fear of a loss at the hands of globalizing forces: mass migration, cultural relativism and the hybridization of their national identity. This rhetoric of fear is channelled into deep resentment against migrants represented as ‘fetishised’ strangers, excluded them from the ‘imagined community' of belonging. In my close-reading, I focus on how El Bezaz’s novel engages a dialectical process of estrangement and embodiment, of exclusion and inclusion, of solidarity and resistance in its representation of migrants’ cultural difference. Examining the bond between storytelling and the extra-literary reality/new realism, I delve into the way the text narrates the process of ‘strangering' migrants as communities of fear and instead expresses resistance and solidarity in face of exclusionary mechanism.

Discursive and photographic representations of migrants in the media: the case of Ceuta and Melilla

ABSTRACT The Spanish autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla have long been sites of undocumented migration to Spain. Owing to both anti-immigration attitudes often perpetuated in political discourse and the challenges involved in blocking migration in cities that are geographically separated from Spain’s mainland, this migratory context has been heavily debated in Spain. However, it is critical to examine attitudes towards migrant populations of different legal statuses, and particularly essential to look at widely disseminated discourse such as mass media, which has the power to be impactful in shaping popular opinions. In this study, I analyse such discourse, and examine how migrants are represented in Spanish media. Using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2003) and media framing (Littlejohn, Foss, and Oetzel [2021]. “The Medium.” In Theories of Human Communication, 151–154. Waveland Press), this study looks at 100 online news articles published over a 10-year period (2013–2022). Findings indicate that news outlets use both text and photos to dehumanise and criminalise migrant populations.

The Turbulence of Postcolonial Displacement, Exclusion and Racism in Tahar Ben Jelloun’s Les Yeux Baissés

Abstract This article examines the Moroccan-French author, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s novel Les Yeux Baissés, translated as With Downcast Eyes. A winner of the Prix Goncourt, the author narrates the challenges of postcolonial displacement, exclusion and racism in a French multicultural neighbourhood. The novel explores the theme of displacement as one that is two-fold: firstly, it refers to the migration process, while secondly, it foregrounds the socio-cultural dimension of being “out of place” in the diaspora. I delve into the way migrants’ children experience the turbulence of displacement, exclusion, and racism. While engaging with postcolonial theoretical debates, this study considers the representation of migrants’ alienation in the narrative resulting from a lack of French hospitality and acute hostility. As such, this article demonstrates that postcolonial displacement does not enable the homogenization of cultures, but rather reinforces boundaries, at the social and cultural level, in the diaspora.

Vacillating between “strange” and “familiar” - representations of children in migrant families and their health in Swedish school health services

Representations of migrants influence how they are perceived by others. Hence, how children who have migrated or whose parents have migrated (Children in Migrant Families: CMFs) are represented in clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) for Swedish school health services (SHS) may influence how they are perceived by school nurses. Thus, this study aimed to explore representations of CMFs in school nurses’ CPGs.Data consisted of 130 CPGs from municipalities in Sweden. Documents were analyzed using the “What is the Problem Represented to be” (WPR) approach – an analytic strategy for investigating embedded assumptions of “problems”. In the analysis, Sarah Ahmed's work on “strangers” and “strangeness” was applied.In the CPGs, the CMFs and their health were repeatedly mentioned in conjunction with the need for particular or additional actions, efforts, or routines when assessing or discussing their health, to a degree beyond what is “usually” provided. This need was motivated by representing the CMFs and their health as being the same, yet different in relation to “Swedish” children in general. Thus, the children were not only represented as different, but they were “foreignized”. These representations of difference and foreignness placed the children on a continuum in relation to what is recognized as “familiar” in their health, and constructed elastic boundaries between the strange and the familiar. By illustrating how these boundaries were used for difference-making between “familiar” and “strange”, this study showed how CMFs are alternately represented as similar and different, and foreignized while provided with SHS aiming to make them “familiar”.

The Political Participation and Representation of Migrants: An Overview

<p>This special issue covers the participation and representation of migrants in contemporary politics. It focuses on two interconnected analytical dimensions: countries of residence and countries of origin as arenas of political engagement, and the supply and demand sides of political representation. The articles in the special issue advance the existing knowledge in migration studies and party politics both theoretically and empirically. They do so by proposing innovative analytical frameworks to assess the extent of participation and representation, and by bringing evidence that fosters a better understanding of the intricate relationship between migration and politics.</p>

The representation of migration in parliamentary settings: critical cross-linguistics corpus-assisted discourse analyses

This study examines migration representation in three parliamentary chambers: the Spanish Chamber, the European Parliament, and the British House of Commons. The time span of its analysis coincides with the eighth Legislature of Spain (2004–2008). The reasons for this decision are straightforward. If parliaments portray or construct ideological debates in democratic societies, it seems logical to turn our attention to them as a means of assessing the nature and quality of comparable but different multicultural environments in which migration is a major defining feature. Furthermore, this time span allows for an examination of such societies at different ideological phases, for example, Spain’s conceptualisation of migration in the initial stages of parliamentary representation. The study expands the method of corpus-assisted analysis through a critical theoretical framework proposed by the socio-political scientist Zapata-Barrero. Data were obtained from the European Comparable and Parallel Corpus Archive of Parliamentary Speeches. Well-established tools in corpus linguistics, such as frequency and collocation, were employed, leading to an examination of Zapata-Barrero’s reactive and proactive discourses. The quantitative methods used were especially in-depth, undertaking an exhaustive descriptive and statistical treatment and aiming to strengthen the validity of subsequent qualitative analyses. Consequently, a virtuous circle was achieved: the corpus linguistic procedures reached higher levels of theoretical abstraction, while Zapata-Barrero’s framework gained robustness and more potential for generalisation. The study’s originality, thus, lies in the mutual synergies activated by this theoretical and methodological combination.

Migration and Representation of Migration in Turkish High School History Textbooks

Migration and Representation of Migration in Turkish High School History Textbooks

Sonic Sensibility: Reading the Soundscape in Zimbabwean Diasporic Literary Works

ABSTRACT Representations of Zimbabwean migrants to South Africa, in scholarship as well as the media, have tended to focus on the often spectacular violence experienced by these migrants. Southern African literary criticism, too, has often privileged the visual, the ocular, and the spectacle. In this article, I focus on a different sensory dimension: the literary representation of sound. I show how sound and soundscapes, as represented in selected literary works, can illuminate everyday aspects of migratory experiences. I focus on aurality, arguing that listening provides a new methodology for reading and interpreting migrant fiction about the lived experiences of Black Zimbabwean migrants in South Africa. Building on theories of the soundscape, I examine how literary representations of migrant listening practices are deployed to comment on lived experiences, and how migrant literary characters’ encounters with other migrants illuminate the layered dimensions of forced migration. I argue that a sound-focused analysis of literary works, rather than a focus on the representation of visual spectacle and description, can give readers access to the sense of rootlessness experienced by migrants. Such an aural approach demonstrates that literary and creative works are useful archives of subverted and denied claims of belonging premised on ancestry and geography.

Climate Migrations and Reverse Colonisation in Italian Eco-Dystopias

ABSTRACT This article investigates the representation of climate migration and climate colonialism in contemporary Italian eco-dystopias. After a theoretical introduction, I address the representation of migrants, and of Italians as climate migrants, in Paolo Zardi's XXI secolo (2015) and Bruno Arpaia's Qualcosa, là fuori (2016). Climate migration is a growing phenomenon that is intimately connected with Anthropocenic violence, and that will produce changes in society and demographics, challenging existing notions of nationality and culture. In the second part, I discuss two novels (Tommaso Pincio's Cinacittà, 2008, and Antonio Scurati's La seconda mezzanotte, 2011) that deal with what I call, following Stephen D. Arata, the anxiety of reverse colonisation. These two novels portray (and express) a fear of a takeover of Italy by the Chinese that is rooted in both long-standing anti-immigration prejudices and the new shapes of contemporary economic colonialism.

Counter-Narratives about Sub-Saharan Migrant Women in the Digital Public Sphere

This article looks at counter-narratives of sub-Saharan migrant women in the digital public sphere in Morocco. It aims to highlight the civic engagement of migrant social media activism. Whereas migration and media have been covered in other contexts, this study contributes to the debate in Morocco and North/Sub-Saharan Africa. It will tackle the topic of media migrant representation in Morocco, with a particular focus on women’s representation. It examines Hassan Yemcheu’s YouTube page, on which he uploads videos for the association Planet Migrant. This case study is significant because it provides rare content about the situation of sub-Saharan migrant women in Morocco in a male-dominated narrative space. Planet Migrant’s videos at times focus on migrant women’s entrepreneurship or domestic violence, an outlier from most other migrant narratives in Morocco. The methodology relies on textual analysis (Bainbridge 2010), which is supplemented with insights and comments derived from an interview conducted with Yemcheu about the processes, conditions, and content of his work. It will highlight ways of “talking back” (Hooks 1998) to gain some symbolic digital space through participatory/citizen journalism. Through this media intervention which stands against a backdrop of misinformation and limited coverage, Yemcheu capitalizes on digital storytelling to share stories about fellow migrants. Despite the small social media reach and limited engagement, the selected videos shed light on gender issues for sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco in their struggle to regain some symbolic power and socio-political agency.

An Authoritarian Spectacle: Visual Biopolitics and the Dramaturgy of the Poland-Belarus Border Migration Crisis

This article analyzes the 2021–22 migration crisis at the EU-Belarus border through the conceptual lens of visual biopolitics. Based on data available from the regime-run media in Belarus it demonstrates how the engineered crisis was a case of authoritarian dramaturgy relying on numerous visual representations of migrants. The carefully staged authoritarian spectacle exploits both the vulnerability and grievability of refugee life, and the regime’s role as a self-appointed sovereign exercising comprehensive biopolitical care and protection over the population of migrants stranded at the border between Belarus and Poland.