“Journey into hell […where] migrants froze to death”; a critical stylistic analysis of European newspapers’ first response to the 2019 Essex Lorry deaths

Abstract

In the early hours of October 23rd, 2019, 39 people were found dead in a refrigerated lorry in Grays, Essex, UK. This case attracted media interest across the world; in the 48-h period after the story broke, reporting on this discovery extended to newspapers not just in the UK, but also across Europe. This study uses elements of Critical Stylistics (Jeffries 2010) to analyse and compare first response articles published by European dailies in relation to the event at Grays, to address the nature of this reporting. We found that linguistic choices tend to dramatise what happened, criminalise victims, and even presume the driver’s innocence, with the international criminal network he is presupposed to be part of remaining only speculated on. Though there are attempts to distribute some accountability to governments and policies, as well as structural systemic factors such as war and poverty, responsibility for these factors tends to be diffused, and hence unallocated, this helping ultimately justify draconic law enforcement and border security policies. By highlighting linguistic trends and underlying ideologies which we in turn question, we address the need to tend to the structural causes of such transnational people movement-related crime (i.e. trafficking and smuggling) and shift accountability to governments.

Victims of a Human Tragedy or “Objects” of Migrant Smuggling? Media Framing of Greece’s Deadliest Migrant Shipwreck in Pylos’ Dark Waters

“…Most importantly, as is often the case after similar incidents (Mancini et al 2021), smugglers were held solely responsible for the wreck, having been accused of taking advantage of the desperate attempts of individuals trying to reach Europe. Moreover, some news reports suggested that the migrants and refugees on board themselves made the decision to relocate overseas, which led to their own hardship and fostered victimization, an aspect also noted by Gregoriou et al (2022). Anchored in the discourse and the agenda of official sources, the media under investigation was unable to draw attention to the range of issues surrounding migration at this time.…”

“…Similarly, visual framing processes, such as pictures taken from above, presumably from a helicopter, yielding a birds-eye view perspective, depicting dead bodies floating on the surface of the blue sea, act to reinforce the dehumanizing narrative (Giubilaro 2018). Many media sources use object metaphors and describe smuggling as "business" or "commerce", using language that makes the trafficked seem as "currency", "shipments", or "cargo", "objects to manipulate" (Montagut and Moragas-Fernández 2020), while smugglers are portrayed as "machines" (Gregoriou et al 2022). Many media outlets quickly classify these individuals as migrants even though they are not really aware of their nationality.…”

“…Many media outlets quickly classify these individuals as migrants even though they are not really aware of their nationality. The word "migrant" implies, in all languages, that the person making the move chose to move abroad with the goal of improving his or her economic circumstance (Benert and Beier 2016), which creates a victim-blaming effect (Gregoriou et al 2022). In conclusion, media outlets often suggest that these people caused their own misfortune, largely ignoring the systemic factors that drive migration and the risk of victimization associated with migration, even though there is some acknowledgement that these people may be "legitimate" victims (Gregoriou et al 2022).…”

“…Instead, as customarily occurs in the wake of such events (Mancini et al 2021), much of the blame for the wreck was placed on the smugglers that were seen to have refused help and exploited the desperation of the people seeking to enter Europe and portrayed them as the main cause of the shipwreck, in nearly half of the news stories (48.80%). Among them, few news stories implied that the migrants and refugees on board chose to move abroad and hence contributed to their own misfortune, creating a victim-blaming effect, also identified in the past by Gregoriou et al (2022). At the same time, it is also important to stress that these examples allow us to see how the identification of a problem in one way or another also indicates the solutions adopted to solve the problem.…”