The Visualization of Migration

Abstract

This article focuses on the election posters for the initiative Gegen Masseneinwanderung (Against Mass Immigration) launched by the national conservative Swiss People's Party (Schweizer Volkspartei) in February 2014. Based on qualitative visual analysis, I discuss how sociospatial phenomena are visualized to convey political messages. First, I undertake the important task of identifying discursive and visual elements of the image, as well as the image-text pattern in order to understand how meaning is created. Second, I investigate the concrete praxis of the image: How do images argue, substantiate, and demonstrate in a way that allows viewers to make meaning out of them? Third, I follow a productive step of contextualizing the praxis of the image. To understand how visual messages are effectively conveyed, and how images help to create a politically strategic context and persuade viewers, involves examining the narratives and contexts that the images rely on in order to be understood by viewers. Visual analysis allows for insights into the ways in which visual constructions of reality are created. Furthermore, this article offers methodological strategies that are key to understanding how images are used to depict and construct realities and how these realities are accepted as true, as it is the case with the posters designed for the Against Mass Immigration initiative. Keywords visual geography, visual construction of migration, visual practice of conviction Introduction: Message as Images On February 9, 2014, the Swiss electorate voted for the federal initiative Against Mass Immigration, a proposal launched by the Swiss People's Party (SVP), aimed at limiting immigration through quotas (website: Federal Department of Justice and Police). The high turnout of 55.8% and the unexpected approval show that the message of the SVP had reached the electorate. In the run-up to the vote, the SVP promulgated the problems caused by mass immigration, such as overcrowding of Swiss roads and trains, an unacceptable burden on the social services as well as "increasing foreigner crime" and "wage dumping". To convey these messages, the SVP continued a tradition that had already seen success with past initiatives (the 2010 Ausschaffungsinitiative-Deportation initiative; the Initiative gegen den Bau von Minaretten in 2009-Initiative against the Building of Minarets, website: Ausschaffungsinitiative, Minarettinitiative): political argumentation through the visualization of sociospatial problems resulting from migration. In response to the referendum, the Swiss Federal Council and parliament were given three years to develop a new approval system for migration. On December 22, 2016, Switzerland and the European Union (EU) agreed on the option of "priority for Swiss nationals", which does not limit the free movement of EU workers to Switzerland but may require Swiss employers to give priority to candidates based in Switzerland. Theoretical Approaches: Visualization as Practice Methods from social science, humanities, and cultural sci...

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“…Other scholars have approached the study of the 'against mass immigration' initiative through visual praxis by analyzing the political messages that were conveyed through images during the debate. Wintzer (2019) interestingly analyses the posters released by the right-wing Swiss People's Party which generally portray Switzerland as a country which is overcrowded and one that must stop immigration. The author finds a discourse that emerges amongst these posters which portrays Switzerland as a homogenic space as visualized through the references to the colors red and white and the Swiss cross (p. 7).…”

“…The analysis of these images is critical to understanding how the SVP employed historically symbolic elements to construct specific and strategic social narratives about migration and foreigners in Switzerland. 23 In enabling viewers to link previously existing knowledge to their emerging fears, needs, or expectations, the campaign posters of the SVP produce new forms of knowledge in the existent discourses which appear real or 'true' (Wintzer, 2019). In critical discourse analysis, this strategy has also been called Mythopeosis, or the act of telling stories to legitimize discourse (van Leeuwen, 2007).…”

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“…This section seeks to answer the question: How did the discourses of the SVP and of the popular vote translate to policy in Switzerland? On December 22, 2016, Switzerland and the European Union (EU) agreed on the option of "priority for Swiss nationals", which does not limit the free movement of EU workers to Switzerland but may require Swiss employers to give priority to candidates based in Switzerland (Wintzer, 2019). Immigration to Switzerland is controlled by the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) and the Federal Act on Foreign Nationals and Integration (FNIA).…”