Gendering immigration: media framings of the economic and cultural consequences of immigration

Abstract

The media are found to be racialized in framing immigration. Yet, little is known about how the media across regions are gendered in their framings of immigration as economic and cultural issues. Drawing from a representative sample of newspapers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S., this paper conducts a framing analysis of over 1,700 news articles to examine the media's gendering of the economic and cultural consequences of immigration. This paper shows that the media identify migrant men at a higher rate than women when framing immigration as an economic issue and that the media identify migrant women at a higher rate when framing immigration as a cultural issue. However, the findings also suggest that the media do so subtlythe gender of immigrants is rarely revealed but implicitly suggested via stereotypes and cues. This paper provides empirical evidence supporting feminist theory and fills a gap in current literature by adding the intersectional dimensions taking gender and migrant status into account. It offers insight into how the media discursively construct migrant men and women are to illustrate the gendered divison of their impact on the economy and culture.

Stereotypes, disproportions, and power asymmetries in the visual portrayal of migrants in ten countries: an interdisciplinary AI-based approach

“…For instance, Turkish and Arab migrant women in Germany are portrayed as veiled and oppressed within traditional family structures, while migrant women from Eastern Europe and Africa are contextualized as prostitutes (Silva & Mendes, 2009, p. 252). Liu (2021) found that migrant men are more often associated with economic issues, while migrant women are with cultural issues. Furthermore, women tend to be shown as most actively participating in the community or showing a more traditional culture.…”

“…Furthermore, women tend to be shown as most actively participating in the community or showing a more traditional culture. Further, literature shows that migrant women are often portrayed as dependent and subordinate to men, frequently in pictures of pregnant women or women arriving with a baby (Liu, 2020(Liu, , 2021.…”

Gender and Identity Intersectionality: Evidence from the Spanish Press Coverage of Migrant and/or Racialized Women

“…With women candidates from ethnic minorities receiving more media attention in the UK than their white counterparts, the coverage they receive is exceptionally negative and focused on their ethnic and gender dimensions (Ward 2017). Liu (2022) concludes that the media focus on men when immigration is understood in economic terms, while they focus on women when immigration is understood in cultural terms. Thus, there is a tendency to generate an opinion of the impact of immigration which is different depending on the gender of those who, at the same time, are marked by foreignness and/or ethnoculturality.…”