The politics and poetics of migrant narratives

Abstract

Serving as the introduction to the special issue on ‘Migrant narratives’, this article proposes a multi-perspectival and multi-stakeholder analysis of how migration is narrated in the media in the last decade. This research agenda is developed by focussing on groups of actors that are commonly studied in isolation from each other: (1) migrants, (2) media professionals such as journalists and spokespersons from humanitarian organizations, (3) governments and corporations and (4) artists and activists. We take a relational approach to recognize how media power is articulated alongside a spectrum of more top-down and more bottom-up perspectives, through specific formats, genres and styles within and against larger frameworks of governmentality. Taken together, the poetics and politics of migrant narratives demand attention respectively for how stakeholders variously aesthetically present and politically represent migration. The opportunities, challenges, problems and commitments observed among the four groups of actors also provide the means to rethink our practice and responsibilities as media and migration scholars contributing to decentring media technologies and re-humanizing migrants.

Mobile Belonging in Digital Exile: Methodological Reflection on Doing Ethnography on (Social) Media Practices

“…These documents, drawn from her protest and activism and from a variety of media from different situations and places, represent a strong testimony to the brutal and politically motivated murder. Considering that "the recreation of personal records, family histories and communal identities ultimately becomes an attempt to reclaim and reconstruct their shattered lives and to honour the memory of those who perished" (Halilovich, 2016, p. 83), this work represents an important insight to the multiple politics and poetics of migrant narratives (Leurs et al, 2020).…”

Experiences of Female Political Activists from Eastern and Central Europe in Berlin: An Intersectional Analysis

“…Symbolic representations refer to "norms, ideologies and representations, used as hegemonically verified justifications, are based on naturalizing and/or hierarchy-creating assessments on the grounds of numerous categories of difference" (Degele and Winker 2011;54). The representation of migrants in national media is a widely discussed subject in contemporary sociological literature (Leurs et al, 2020;Pettinger and Youngs 2019;Jamil and Kumar 2020;Miri et al 2020). Analyzing the representation of a certain migrant group in a host country indicates a general perception of this group in the society.…”

Border countervisuality: smartphone videos of border crossing and migration

“…“The right to look” brings authorship and agency in the production of the visuality of migration to the fore. Leurs et al (2020) observe, for example, that images of migration produced by different actors such as journalists, artists, activists, or migrants each tell a different story of migration, and thereby represent different visual politics. With the visual language of the current Western mediascape relating to border regimes dominated by the distanced gaze, diversification of visuality is needed to allow for critical engagement with postcolonial legacies and continuities.…”