Sounds of the ‘Jungle’: Restoring The Migrant Voice on Social Media
Ibrahim, Yasmin and
Howarth, Anita (2015) Sounds of the ‘Jungle’: Restoring The Migrant Voice on
Social Media. JOMEC. (7), http://www.qmul.ac.uk/docs/167415.pdf
Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick / Calais - Manifestation contre les clandestins, l'immigration |
This
article examines the cross-border tensions over migrant settlements dubbed ‘The
Jungle’ in Calais, France. ‘The Jungle’, which was strongly associated with the
unauthorized movement of migrants, became a physical entity enmeshed in
discourses of illegality and the
violation of white suburbia. The British mainstream media have rendered the
migrants either voiceless or faceless, appropriating them into discourses of immigration
policy and the violent transgression of borders, while silencing the human trauma
of migration through the distancing of the human subject in media discourses. Through
the Calais Migrant Solidarity (CMS) case study we highlight how new media spaces
can rehumanize migrants, enabling them to tell their stories through their own narratives,
images and vantage points not shown in the mainstream media. This reconstruction
of the migrant is an important device in enabling proximity and reconstituting
the migrant as real and human. This sharply contrasts with the distance-framing
techniques of the mainstream media, which dehumanize the migrant, locating the
phenomenon of migration as a disruptive contaminant in civilized and ordered societies.
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