Refugees, coronavirus and the politics of representation in the Spanish press

Abstract

COVID-19 outbreak brought important consequences for global mobility. Border closures throughout the world meant the interruption of migratory processes, both forced and volunteer, leaving millions of people stuck on the way. This article analyses the news articles published by the Spanish newspapers El País and El Mundo, to find out if the pandemic has meant a change in the politics of representation of migration and refuge in the Spanish media during the first months of 2020. The qualitative content analysis focuses on the main sources and predominant themes in media coverage, as well as the labels applied to migrants and refugees in different contexts. The results show that changes have taken place due to the pandemic, with new nuances in the representation of migrants and refugees as victims or as a threat, but also giving space to new types of representation: migrants as necessary, and as active agents in the context of a global emergency.

‘Italians locked at home, illegal migrants free to disembark’: How populist parties re-contextualized the anti-immigration discourse at the time of COVID-19 pandemic

“…In other words, the appeal to ‘safety’ and ‘health’ as universal and superordinate values relates to a dehumanizing rhetoric that legitimizes the rejection of migrants in paradoxical defense of liberal values (Rheindorf and Wodak, 2018). Thus, as happens with other emergencies or crisis, the outbreak risks further legitimizes securitarization and border politics (Ferrández-Ferrer, 2021) constructing national state as bodies that have to be protected from invasion, penetration, infection, or disease (Musolff, 2004).…”