Globalization, the Media, and Challenges of Illegal Migration for Africa (original) (raw)
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Interrogating the Wave: Media Representations of African Migrant Youth
Media representations are powerful. Not only do they embody the appealing veneer of journalistic impartiality, which seems to objectively reflect world in unadulterated ways, but also they help to generate public opinion and thus create consensus when crafting and mobilizing particular policy responses. Such an image-policy nexus is exemplified in the hyper-mediatized phenomenon of clandestine migration out of West Africa during 2006 and 2007. While the Western route was effectively crippled by the implementation of border controls and surveillance technologies, the images we see today of boat migrants leaving North African shores bear a striking similarity to those circulated nearly a decade ago. In order to highlight the productive relationship between image and policy, this photo essay explores some of the visual and rhetorical representations of West African boat migrants that circulated widely in the European and American press during what was called a “wave” of clandestine arrivals in the Canary Islands. I briefly explore the history of clandestine boat migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands before unpacking some of the strategies that image producers used to inform broader publics about the “threat of invasion” of poor African youth on European soil. I conclude by examining some of the policies mobilized in response to the “wave” of clandestine arrivals and the contemporary phenomenon of boat migration to Europe. (Media representations are powerful. Not only do they embody the appealing veneer of journalistic impartiality, which seems to objectively reflect world in unadulterated ways, but also they help to generate public opinion and thus create consensus when crafting and mobilizing particular policy responses. Such an image-policy nexus is exemplified in the hyper-mediatized phenomenon of clandestine migration out of West Africa during 2006 and 2007. While the Western route was effectively crippled by the implementation of border controls and surveillance technologies, the images we see today of boat migrants leaving North African shores bear a striking similarity to those circulated nearly a decade ago. In order to highlight the productive relationship between image and policy, this photo essay explores some of the visual and rhetorical representations of West African boat migrants that circulated widely in the European and American press during what was called a “wave” of clandestine arrivals in the Canary Islands. I briefly explore the history of clandestine boat migration from Senegal to the Canary Islands before unpacking some of the strategies that image producers used to inform broader publics about the “threat of invasion” of poor African youth on European soil. I conclude by examining some of the policies mobilized in response to the “wave” of clandestine arrivals and the contemporary phenomenon of boat migration to Europe.
The lecture is based on several sources on migration, human trafficking and human displacement –AHA, 2016 (A View from an African NGO on Forced Displacement), Costantinos, 2015, (Forging partnerships in addressing human trafficking and forced displacement in Africa: priming the conduct of international partnership to stem the tide and agony of human trafficking and displacement and Ephrem Beshah, 2008 (Coverage of Human Trafficking: Analysis of 'Enewaq' Programme) Abstract In 36 countries in Africa, the very fundamental rights to receive protection for the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhances human freedoms and human fulfilment has failed as a result of conflicts. The impact of conflicts on the migration is that it disintegrates freedom – fundamental freedom that is the essence of life. Hence, not only governments but people too would find themselves engaged in protecting themselves from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats, situations, and that serves as fuel for the retraction of the human condition in Africa. Current discussions and analyses of conflicts in Africa are marked by several limitations-a tendency to narrow governance thought and practice to the terms and categories of immediate, not very well considered, political and social action, a naive realism, as it were. Further, we look at the inattention to problems of articulation or production of governance system and process within African politics rather than simply as abstract possibilities adding to the ambiguity as to whether civil society is the agent or object of democratic change. A nearly exclusive concern in certain institutional perspectives on migration with generic attributes and characteristics of political organisations and consequent neglect of analysis in terms of their specific strategies and performances; and inadequate treatment of the role of international agencies and of relations between global and indigenous dimensions of development and human security in Africa. The solution lies in developing strategies to address the problems of failed and fragile states that have not been able to ensure human security and human development. Both are concerned with the basic freedoms that people enjoy. However , they look out on shared goals with different scopes. Human development is about people, about expanding their choices to lead lives they value. It has an optimistic quality, since it focuses on expanding opportunities for people so that progress is fair-growth with equity.
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The alarmism caused by the use of catastrophic headlines and words on major means of communication as soon as the arrival of migrants along the coasts of southern European countries intensifies is a recent phenomenon. Media immediately start talking about an 'invasion', an 'emergency', even about a Barbarian conquest of Europe. Is this news well founded? And whether it contains some truth or not, what are the consequences of its 'entrance' into the homes of Europeans? The data collected by the United Nations High Commissioners for Refugees (UNHCR) on the arrivals across the Mediterranean considerably reduce this alarmism. In 2016, between January and November, 351,619 people crossed the Mediterranean Sea, risking their lives to reach Europe; butafter March 2016the number of those arriving decreased substantially (UNHCR 2016). The push to migrate from these countries (e.g. Syrian Arab Republic 23%,
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The world continues to observe the occurrences of armed conflicts, economic crises, and other dehumanising circumstances. And such events have forced vast numbers of innocent people to flee their homes with little hope of finding some safe place where they could collect themselves together and start a new life. In this regard, human migration is one of the most arduous challenges faced by nations. This phenomenon is depicted, in its practical conceptualisation, as the movement of people from one place to another with the aim at settling, permanently or temporarily, in a new location. Since the advent of the twenty-first century, the world has witnessed massive escalations of involuntary migrations because of transformational crises (such as the Syrian civil war 2011- ), and new research needs to understand such mass movements. To a degree, themes associated with the migration phenomenon have increasingly informed research topics with ties to other already well-established disciplines (e.g., media, politics, economics, sociology, public health) and they overlap productively. People who entirely leave their home countries to settle in new ones are referred to as migrants, immigrants or refugees based on their reasons for movement. And despite the different motivations behind people’s movement across borders, the terms, migrants, immigrants and refugees are commonly used interchangeably in media and public discourse (UNHCR, 2016). In brief, this chapter represents an attempt to produce a scholarly synthesis of current media and political discourses upon migrants.
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