A critical discourse study of the portrayal of immigrants as non-citizens in a sample from the Spanish press
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37536/LYM.14.1.2022.1053Keywords:
Sub-Saharan immigrants, critical discourse analysis, Spanish press, citizenshipAbstract
This study intends to contribute to critical discourse analysis (CDA) by observing how the discourse of the press represents immigrants. The objective of this paper is to observe the main linguistic characteristics used by the press to portray sub-Saharan immigrants as non-citizens, in a sample from the Spanish press. The corpus consists of the news items published in the digital editions of the newspapers El País and ABC from 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019. The main discursive characteristics analysed to observe the representation of immigrants as non-citizens are lexis, the use of figures and the passive voice. The methodology combines qualitative and quantitative data.
The analysis will show that the discourse of the press tends to represent immigrants in a negative way, to reproduce the dichotomy ‘we-they’ and to represent immigrants as ‘the other’. The findings indicate that the recurrent use of certain words to refer to immigrants, the use of figures that evoke a sense of invasion and the representation of them as passive individuals do not favour integration but on the contrary the exclusion of immigrants from Spanish society, which thus promotes non-citizenship.
Downloads
References
ABC, 1 January 2015-31 December 2019. http://www.abc.es
Aguilar-Idáñez, María-José & Daniel Burasch. 2017. “Migrantes y refugiados: apuntes clave para un nuevo relato”. Revista Lusófona de Educação, 37. 103-116. doi: https://doi.org/10.24140/issn.1645-7250.rle37.07
Anderson, Bridget. 2013. Us and them? The dangerous politics ofiImmigration control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aptekar, Sofya. 2015. The road to citizenship: What naturalization means for immigrants in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Arango, Joaquín. 2002. La fisonomía de la inmigración en España. El campo de las ciencias y las artes, 139 («El nuevo orden demográfico»). Madrid: Servicio de Estudios BBVA.
Bakkær Simonsen, Kristina. 2017. “Does citizenship always further Immigrants’ feeling of belonging to the host nation? A study of policies and public attitudes in 14 Western democracies”. Comparative Migration Studies, 5:3. 1-17. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40878-017-0050-6
Bañón Hernández Antonio M. 2007. “El discurso periodístico a propósito del viaje de los inmigrantes pobres”. In Discursos sobre la inmigración en España. Los medios de comunicación, los parlamentos y las administraciones, Ricard Zapata-Barrero & Teun Van Dijk T (eds.), 45–67. Barcelona: Fundación CIDOB.
Bañón, Antonio M. 2019. “Medios de comunicación y procesos migratorios: reflexiones para el debate”. In El fenómeno migratorio en España: reflexiones desde el ámbito de la Seguridad Nacional, Comité Especializado de Inmigración (eds.), 353-359. Madrid: Ministerio de la Presidencia, Relaciones con las Cortes e Igualdad.
Bañón Hernández, Antonio M. & Samantha R Romero. 2013. “Ánimo. Estamos con vosotros: Messages of solidarity written in a visitors’ book during a sit-in conducted by a group of immigrants in Spain”. Discourse & Society, 24:1. 3–26.
Barlai, Melani, Fähnrish, Birte, Griessler, Christina & Rhomberg, Markus (Eds.) 2017. The migrant crisis: European perspectives and national discourses. Zürich: Lit Verlag.
Bassel, Leah, Pierre Monforte & Kamran Khan. 2018. “Making political citizens? Migrants’ narratives of naturalization in the United Kingdom”, Citizenship Studies, 22:3. 225-242. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2018.1449808
Bednarek, Monika & Helen Caple. 2017. The discourse of news values. How news organizations create newsworthiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Berry, Mike, Iñaki Garcia-Blanco & Kerry Moore. 2016. Press coverage of the refugee crisis in the EU: A content analysis of five European countries. Geneva: United Nations High Commission for Refugees. Available at: http://www.unhcr.org/56bb369c9. html
Bloemraad, Irene, Anna Korteweg, & Gökce Yurdakul. 2008. “Citizenship and Immigration: Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-State”. The Annual Review of Sociology 34. 153–179. doi: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.34.040507.34608
Borjas, George J. 2015. “Immigration and Globalization: A Review Essay”. Journal of Economic Literature, 53:4. 961–974. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/jel.53.4.961
Caicedo, David A. 2016. Alien, illegal, and undocumented: labeling, context, and worldview in the immigration debate and in the lives of undocumented youth. New York, NY: CUNY Academic Works.
Caitlin, Patler & Roberto G. Gonzales. 2015. “Framing Citizenship: Media Coverage of Anti-deportation Cases Led by Undocumented Immigrant Youth Organisations”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41:9. 1453-1474, doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1021587
Consejo Económico y Social. 2019. Informe 02/2019. La inmigración en España. Efectos y oportunidades. Madrid: Consejo Económico y Social.
Cruz Moya, Olga. 2020. “De “lobos solitarios” a “carpas africanas”: estrategias de despersonalización en las metáforas empleadas por el discurso periodístico en torno a los refugiados”. Tonos Digital, 38:1. 1-15.
Delanty, Gerard, Ruth Wodak & Paul Jones (eds.). 2011. Migration, identity, and belonging. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.
Dronkers, Jaap & Maarten Peter Vink. 2012. “Explaining access to citizenship in Europe: How citizenship policies affect naturalization rates”. European Union Politics, 13:3. 390–412.
El País, 1 January 2015-31 December. 2019. http://www.elpais.es
Estévez, Ariadna. 2012. Human rights, migration, and social conflict: Towards a decolonized global justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Fairclough, Norman. 2002. Language and power. Second edition. London: Macmillan.
Gebhardt, Dirk. 2015. Cities and immigrant citizenship. A comparison of local citizenship policies in Barcelona and Munich. GRITIM-UPF Working Paper Series n. 26.
Gilbert, Liette. 2013. “The discursive production of a Mexican refugee crisis in Canadian media and policy”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39:1. 1–17.
Goodman, Sara W. 2014. Immigration and membership politics in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goodman, Sara W. & Matthew Wright. 2015. “Does mandatory integration matter? Effects of civic requirements on immigrant socio-economic and political outcomes”. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41:12. 1885-1908. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.1042434
Goodman, Simon W., Ala Sirriyeh & Simon McMahon. 2017. “The Evolving (Re)categorisation of Refugees Throughout the ‘Refugee/Migrant Crisis’”. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 27. 105–114. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/casp.2302
Hagen-Zanker, Jessica, Elisa Mosler Vidal & Georgina Sturge. 2017. Social protection, migration and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. London: ODI.
Hainmueller, Jens, Dominik Hangartner & Giuseppe Pietrantuono. 2015. “Naturalization fosters the long-term political integration of immigrants”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 112:41. 12651–12656.
Holohan, Siobhan. 2019. “Some Human’s Rights: Neocolonial Discourses of Otherness in the Mediterranean Refugee Crisis”. Open Library of Humanities, 5:1. 1–27. doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/olh.423
Howard, Martin M. 2009. The politics of citizenship in Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Jensen, Kristian Kriegbaum. 2014. “What can and cannot be willed: How politicians talk about national identity and immigrants”. Nations and Nationalism, 20:3. 563–583.
Joppke, Christian. 2010. Citizenship and immigration. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Khalid, Marya & Zubair Baig, Mirza Muhammad. 2016. “Patriarchal consumerism: Critical discourse analysis of Pakistani gendered TVCs”. Language in India, 16:8. 59- 67.
Kiwan, Nadia. 2009. Identities, discourses and experiences. Young people of North African origin in France. Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press.
Koopmans, Ruud, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni & Florence Passy (2005). Contested citizenship: Immigration and cultural diversity in Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Koser Akcapar, Sebnem & Dogus Simsek. 2018. “The politics of Syrian refugees in Turkey: A question of inclusion and exclusion through citizenship”. Social Inclusion, 6:1. 176–187. doi: https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v6i1.1323
Krzyżanowski, Michal. 2018. “Discursive shifts in ethno-nationalist politics: Politicisation and mediatisation of the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Poland.” Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 16:1– 2. 76–96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2017.1317897
Krzyżanowski, Michal. 2020. “Discursive shifts and the normalisation of racism: imaginaries of immigration, moral panics and the discourse of contemporary right-wing populism”, Social Semiotics. 30:4. 503-527. doi: http://doi.org.org/10.1080/10350330.2020.1766199
Lamont, Michèle & Virág Molnár. 2002. “The study of boundaries in the social sciences”. Annual review of sociology, 28. 167-195.
Marcos Ramos, María & Beatriz González de Garay. 2019. “The psychosocial portrayals of immigrants in Spanish prime time televisión fiction (2016-2017)”. Communication & Society, 32:4. 1-15.
Martínez Lirola, María. 2016. “Multimodal representation of Sub-Saharan immigrants as illegal: deconstructing their portrayal as victims, heroes and threats in a sample from the Spanish press”. Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 93:4. 343–360.
Martínez Lirola, María. 2017b. “Discursive legitimation of criminalization and victimization of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spanish El País and ABC newspapers”. In: Representing the Other in European Media Discourses, Jan Chovanec and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska (eds.). 136-154. Amsterdam/Philadelpia: John Benjamins, https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.74.07mar
Martínez Lirola, María. 2017b. “Linguistic and visual strategies for portraying immigrants as people deprived of human rights”. Social Semiotics, 27:1. 21-38. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2015.1137164
Milner, Michael W. 2012. “The discursive construction of global poverty: Social justice in media discourse”. In Forming a culture of peace. Reframing narratives of intergroup relations, equity, and justice, Karyna V. Korostelina (ed.), 131-164. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Moore, Kerry, Bernhard Gross & Terry Threadgold (eds.). 2012. Migrations and the media. New York: Peter Lang.
Moran, Anthony. 2011. “Multiculturalism as nation-building in Australia: inclusive national identity and the embrace of diversity”. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34:12. 2153-2172.
Nelson, Robin Lee & Davis-Wiley, Patricia. 2018. “Illegal or undocumented: An analysis of immigrant terminology in contemporary American media”. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 6:6. 8-15.
Nicolai, Susan, Joseph Wales & Erica Aiazzi. 2017. Education, migration and the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development. London: ODI.
Pries, Ludger. 2018. “Entre la bienvenida y el rechazo: la “Crisis de los refugiados” en Europa”. POLIS, 14:2. 71-96.
Rheindorf, Markus & Wodak, Ruth (eds.) 2020. Sociolinguistic perspectives on migration control, Language policy, identity and belonging. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Rodríguez Breijo, Vanessa. 2010. “La representación televisiva de los inmigrantes africanos: invisibilidad, desconocimiento y precariedad”. Revista Mediterránea de Comunicación, 1. 113-140.
Sindoni, Maria Grazia. 2018. “Direct hate speech vs. indirect fear speech. A multimodal critical discourse analysis of the Sun's editorial "1 in 5 Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis"”. Lingue e Linguaggi Lingue Linguaggi, 28. 267-292. doi: https://doi.org/10.1285/i22390359v28p267
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2008. “Reproducir el racismo: el rol de la prensa”. In La inmigración sale a la calle. Comunicación y discursos políticos sobre el discurso migratorio, Francisco Checa y Olmos (ed.), 19-49. Barcelona: Icaria.
Van Dijk, Teun A. 2009. Discurso y poder. Translated by Alcira Bixio. Barcelona:
Gedisa.
van Dijk, Teun A. 2018. “Discourse and Migration”. In Qualitative research in European migration studies, Ricard Zapata-Barrero & Evren Yalaz (eds.), 227-245. IMISCOE Research Series. doi: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76861-8_13
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 2008. Discourse and practice. New tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wodak, Ruth. 2020. “The language of walls: inclusion, exclusion, and the racialization of space”. In Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Racisms, John Solomos (ed.), 160-177. London: Routledge.
Wodak, Ruth & Michael Meyer. 2009. “Critical discourse analysis: History, agenda, theory and methodology”. In Methods of critical discourse analysis, Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.), 1-33. Second edition. London: Sage.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 María Martínez Lirola
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
