Saga and suffering of the Senegalese other: building racism into media representations of migration

Abstract

This article investigates the media representation of Senegalese migration to Brazil, drawing on debates on identity, representation, diaspora, and racism. It maps out media coverage on Senegalese migration in the state of Rio Grande do Sul by analyzing the content of 145 news items on websites from eight newspapers between 2014 and 2015. Later, this helps to analyze an article portraying the arrival of new migration flows to the country from newspaper Zero Hora. We have identified that, even though it is set to show migrants’ situation in a humanized fashion, the newspaper article still reinforces the association between victimhood and migration, thus pointing to a media construction that naturalizes differences between us, nationals, and the other, the black migrant.

Keywords

• representações
• mídia
• migrações
• racismo