Introduction
Immigration has become one of the most charged topics of discussion in the twenty-first century. In many countries, it has brought to the fore uneasy and nervous debates around citizenship and belonging, which have manifested themselves in both policy deliberations and media representations of immigration and immigrants. In some countries, it has elicited extreme hatred and violent outbursts aimed at excluding the âforeign Othersâ. In many instances, these acts of violence are performed by âpowerless insidersâ against equally âpowerless outsiders â, with the former often furthered by power elites for political gain. In as much as these discriminatory practices rob the immigrants of their right to dignity as human beings who have been pushed by circumstances to leave their home countries, they also tend to dehumanise the perpetrators who in the process devalue their own humanity.
While a significant amount of research has been conducted on xenophobia, which in simple terms refers to a strong prejudice, dislike or hatred of foreigners, and on some of its ramifications in different parts of the world, little has been written about how it has been mediated, particularly in the mainstream and social/alternative media in the Global South. Worse, little attention has been paid to the voices of the victims of xenophobia to understand its detrimental psychological effects as they experience what in many instances is âsecondary victimisationâ. This epitomises what W. E. B. Dubois (1897) described as âever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of framing it ⊠How does it feel to be a problem?â For to be a migrant is to be a problem.
The term âmediationâ in this book is used similar to what has in recent years been termed âmediatisationâ (Lundby 2009), which refers to âthe process by which everyday practices and social relations are historically shaped by mediating technologies and media organisationsâ, as opposed to its general usage in reference to processes of âconciliation, intervention or negotiationâ (Livingstone 2009, pp. ixâx). It is used to highlight the power of the media in shaping discourses, not just reproducing them.
Understanding how the media report immigration and its consequences, including xenophobia, is critical in todayâs world, where the majority of global citizens do not âexperienceâ immigration and xenophobia first-hand but mostly through secondary sources, including personal networks and institutions such as schools, churches and the media (Crush and Pendleton 2004; McDonald and Jacobs 2005). The media, in particular, are in the frontline of enabling this experience since they wield enormous power not only in shaping public perceptions on immigrants but also in influencing public policy on immigration. What has often been referred to as the âmigration crisisâ in Europe and the USA, for instance, has largely been âwitnessedâ by many through the media, which play the role of âprimary definersâ in naming and describing the phenomenon. They use terms such as flow, influx and tide, which often generate fear of an immigrant takeover. This, however, does not suggest that the media are all-powerful since the mediation process does not exclude listeners, readers or viewers who also have power in negotiating social meanings (Hall 2006). As such, Roger Silverstone (2002, p. 761) views it as a dialectical process, which is both technical and social, and whose significance lies in that it âprovides a framework for the definition and conduct of our relationships to the Other, and especially the distant Other, the Other who only appears to us within the mediaâ.
In the age of global terrorism, religious extremism and uncertain and often declining economies, immigrants often suffer multiple layers of prejudice and are blamed for everything that is going wrong in the receiving/host countries, from increasing crime , unemployment and overpopulation, the erosion of cultural values and the diminishing quality of social services, such as health and education, among others. In a context where globalisation is under attack and resurgent nationalism is fuelling unprecedented levels of nativism and intolerance for the foreign Other, immigration becomes both an effect and a cause of friction. Increasingly, right-wing parties are garnering more votes in several Western countries, including the USA, Hungary, Poland, Italy, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in part on the promise that they will deliver tougher immigration policies and tighten border controls to keep immigrants out.
In the USA, President Donald Trumpâs âAmerica Firstâ ethos has stoked up strong anti-globalisation sentiments and triggered new calls for what Morley and Robins (1995, p. 8) called âa return to the pureâ, which is premised on imagined homogenous identities of a romanticised past. Trumpâs position was sharply articulated in his address to the United Nations in 2019. He emphasised the primacy of âsovereign and independent nations who protect their citizensâ, arguing that â[T]he future does not belong to globalists but to patriotsâ. According to this logic, immigrants are an inconvenience to the project of returning to pure âsovereign nationsâ since they simply do not belong and pose a threat to that project. This, together with Trumpâs obsession with erecting electric fences and tall boundary walls, underscores what Francis Nyamnjoh (2006, p. 1) described as âparadoxes of accelerated flows and closuresâ, where âthe rhetoric of free flows and dissolving boundaries is countered by the intensifying reality of borders, divisions and violent strategies of exclusionâ.
In Africa, despite growing messaging around the theme âAfrica risingâ and an âAfrican Renaissanceâ, a myriad of challenges continue to contradict these narratives of hope that have been constructed deliberately to counter a stereotypical narrative of Afro-pessimism, which dwells on hopelessness, darkness, famine and conflict as definers of the continent. Underlying some of the positive messaging about the continent is the argument that not all migration from the continent is forced or results from the typical calamities that are associated with African immigration. In its October 2019 policy brief, the Johannesburg-based Institute for Pan-African Thought and Conversation (IPATC) emphasised the need to combine the âroot causesâ discourse that âfocused on material conditions, and ⊠centred largely around conflict and violence, poor governance, political instability, socio-economic inequalities, climate change, and lack of solid economic opportunitiesâ with the reality that migration âis often voluntaryâ (IPATC 2019).
Most studies on African migration have tended to focus on Africa-to-Europe migration , which is characterised not only by large numbers of deaths as immigrants attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea but also by widespread international media coverage. Yet evidence points to th...