Did you say "migrant"? Media Representations of People on the Move - Valériane Mistiaen - Universite De Bruxelles Eds - broché - Essai

The 2011 war in Syria triggered a wave of people seeking asylum in Europe, which brought immigration into the political and media spotlight and sparked numerous debates on displaced people. These debates have been marked by a heightened focus on the terminology used to describe people on the move. Terms such as refugee, migrant, immigrant, asylum seeker, illegal immigrant, and displaced person have circulated in the media, often blurring our understanding of events or conveying contradictory representations of those involved. Moreover, the words used to define people on the move are not fixed in time ; their meaning and reference emerge from events and social representations, thus shaping both the public issue of migration and the image of the social actors concerned. Using a discursive approach that combines discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, this book examines how the Belgian media referred to displaced people. It is innovative in three key ways. First, it analyses media cove