Sounds of the Jungle: Rehumanizing the Migrant

Ibrahim, Yasmin and Howarth, Anita 2015. Sounds of the Jungle: Rehumanizing the Migrant. JOMEC Journal 7 , pp. 1-17. 10.18573/j.2015.10008

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Abstract

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 distanceframing techniques of the mainstream media, which dehumanize the migrant, locating the phenomenon of migration as a disruptive contaminant in civilized and ordered societies.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races J Political Science > JV Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Migration; Human-Interest Story; New Media; Civil Society; Organizations; Immigration Policy; Suffering
Publisher:	Cardiff University Press
ISSN:	2049-2340
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 November 2016
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 02:00
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/96025

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