Media narratives about the migrant camp El Chaparral in Tijuana, México

Abstract

The media actively participate in framing and codifying public discussion around the current emergency of migrant camps in border cities. The objective of this article is to analyze the construction of diverse narratives about the El Chaparral migrant camp in the city of Tijuana, Mexico, and how they contribute to making the situation of these people in the city more precarious. In their daily work, the news media present a series of perspectives and representations on migration through which the public interpretation of such information is framed. In this sense, using frame analysis on different news stories published locally and nationally regarding the people settled in the camp, discursive mechanisms that create a migrant otherness with no capacity for action were observed: migrants as hostile, stubborn, manipulated and vulnerable people. As part of the discussion, it is analyzed how media representations of migrants are an important element in the precarization process of their lives. In the conclusion it is pointed out that news frames are based on reifying and productivist notions founded on a supposed preexistingorder in the city and become a mechanism of alterification and disempowerment of migrants who need to be subjects of vertical intervention, either to assist them or to exclude them from urban spaces.