Migrants, miseries, and media: measuring the prominence of the miseries of migrants in the coverage of leading Indian English dailies during COVID-19

Masini

2022

MaC

The media hold an essential role in circulating information, disseminating knowledge, constructing representations, shaping ideologies, and influencing contemporary societies. Since the outburst of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, their attention has been mostly paid to the protection and the health situation of citizens worldwide. Although millions of refugees are also exposed to a new risk with their vulnerable position being deteriorated, the refugee issue in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have been downgraded. In this regard, the current article explores to what extent the refugee issue was salient in the Greek, German, and British press during the pandemic. At the same time, it looks at how the media outlets in all three countries addressed it, focusing on the key topics reported and the interpretive schemata of the pertinent coverage. We use a qualitative content analysis, examining a sample of newspaper articles that were published between 1 January 2021 and 1 May 2021. The results presented by this article suggest that the epidemiological developments or other health aspects related to local populations seem to overshadow the situation of refugees. Yet, media outlets mostly perceive refugees as victims of the pandemic, underlining their vulnerability and marginalisation in health, economic, and education terms. The findings seek to feed the public discussion, providing a fruitful approach to the media narratives and representations of refugees during the Covid-19 crisis.

Section: The Covid-19 Pandemicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Refugee Issue in the Greek, German, and British Press During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Masini

2022

MaC

“…Conversely, crisis conditions often disrupt governance by challenging the legitimacy of existing political systems (Boin et al, 2021). During the pandemic, this happened in several ways in the Indian context when (a) internal migrants’ defiance of the national lockdown was perceived to threaten sociopolitical order (Srivastava, 2020); (b) media discourses of migrants’ suffering subjected politicians to additional scrutiny (Raj et al, 2021); and (c) the inability to anticipate and respond to the migrant exodus questioned the legitimacy of existing policies and institutions (Srivastava, 2020). Similarly, in Europe, most countries faced severe political backlash against immigration despite their humanitarian obligations as signatories to international agreements like the 2008 European Pact on Immigration and Asylum (Lesińska, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing Internal Migration Governance in India Through a ‘Mainstreaming’ Lens

Naik

2024

Urbanisation

The COVID-19 migrant crisis was a watershed moment for internal migration, driving home the importance of inclusionary frameworks and action. Despite the lack of an omnibus migration policy, several disparate policy initiatives have emerged at multiple levels of government, across various sectors and involving multiple stakeholder types. This article traces and analyses internal migration policy in India over time, particularly how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped responses. In doing so, it builds on the idea of ‘mainstreaming’, a reflexive approach to policymaking that Peter Scholten proposed to address such complex policy areas as migration. The article argues that a nascent framework for migration governance is evolving in India and offers suggestions on how mainstreaming can help streamline research and policy design for enhanced migrant inclusion.

“…Media has played a significant role in relaying necessary information related to the pandemic across the nation. The plight of the migrant workers during the lockdown was extensively captured by the media, both print and broadcast, in comparison to the migration issues prior to the lockdown [ 13 ]. Within this vast array of information, the present article focuses on using text analysis techniques to identify the major topics and sentiments from the coverage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Topical analysis of migration coverage during lockdown in India by mainstream print media

Agarwal

Sarkar

2022

PLoS ONE

Implementing countrywide lockdown measures in India, from March 2020 to May 2020 was a major step to deal with the COVID -19 pandemic crisis. The decision of country lockdown adversely affected the urban migrant population, and a large section of them was compelled to move out of the urban areas to their native places. The reverse migration garnered widespread media attention and coverage in electronic as well as print media. The present study focuses on the coverage of the issue by print media using descriptive natural language text mining. The study uses topic modelling, clustering, and sentiment analysis to examine the articles on migration issues during the lockdown period published in two leading English newspapers in India- The Times of India and The Hindu. The sentiment analysis results indicate that the majority of articles have neutral sentiment while very few articles show high negative or positive polarity. Descriptive topic modelling results show that transport, food security, special services, and employment with migration and migrants are the majorly covered topics after employing Bag of Words and TF-IDF models. Clustering is performed to group the article titles based on similar traits using agglomerative hierarchical clustering.