Media Discourses on Migration and Education in Post-Pandemic Times

• In Event: Crossing Borders to Connect Routes: Understanding Educational Inequities Affecting Immigrants, From a Transnational Perspective

Abstract

The emergence of COVID-19 has been accompanied by the growing “toxicity” of the immigration debate and anti-immigrant narratives (Institute for Strategic Dialogue, 2020; Guadagno, 2020, Devakumar et al., 2020; Clark et al., 2020), while educational systems worldwide have been submerged in an affective economy of fear (Ahmed, 2004). The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of media coverage in forming public opinion and attitudes towards immigrants during the pandemic in five countries (Brazil, Malta, Spain, the USA and Uruguay), providing a qualitative analysis of how media representation impacts educational policies and practices.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Van Dijk, 2002; de Gee, 2004) allows us to focus on the relationship between language and society, by providing methods and instruments to understand how narratives and discourses are created, interpreted and circulated in the social world. Even though discourse analysis is traditionally associated with literary criticism, language analysis and linguistics, CDA takes linguistic and psychosocial approaches one step further: it understands discourse as social narrative and examines its inherent hierarchies and ideologies, to reveal notions of resistance and appropriation of discourses among various social actors.
The study does not entail a large‐scale analysis of the media coverage of the immigration issue as a whole. Rather, it focuses on news that intersects migration, COVID‐19 and education, from March 2020 to March 2022, in the five countries. Critical analysis follows a thematic, qualitative and exploratory approach, aiming to understand to what extent the immigration issue has been salient during the pandemic, and to identify predominant themes and discursive patterns in media coverage as regards immigrants’ education, from both local and transnational perspectives.
Data sources have been selected based on audience ratings, ideological leaning, distribution (national/regional) and readership (broadsheet/tabloid). Data selection comprises the print and online editions of two mainstream newspapers, as well as a regional one and a tabloid from each of the countries. Content analysis includes factual news items, editorials and op‐eds, having single news articles as the unit of analysis.
Preliminary results allow us to identify different discursive frameworks on immigration in the context of a pandemic. Although significant differences are observed between countries, immigrant groups and ideological positioning of the analyzed media, transversal lines are identifiable. For instance, there is a prevalence of media outlets that perceive immigrants as primary victims of the pandemic, highlighting their vulnerability and marginalization. However, prejudices are also highlighted, while their potential contributions (economic, social, cultural or other) to overcoming the COVID-19 crisis are hardly mentioned.
The media play an essential role in circulating information, disseminating knowledge, constructing representations, shaping ideologies and influencing contemporary societies. Although there is a great body of literature that explores the role of the media in the social representation of immigration, much less is known about the particularities of these representations in the intersection of immigration, education and the pandemic. This study contributes to filling this gap, adding a cross‐national dimension that encompasses different media systems, in addition to educational, social and cultural backgrounds.

Authors

• Amalia Creus, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  Presenting Author

• David E. Zammit, University of Malta
  Presenting Author

• Rachel Kluger, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  Presenting Author

• Ines Martins, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya
  Presenting Author