Migrants, refugees and othering: constructing europeanness. An exploration of Portuguese and German media

Abstract

The process of establishing the supranational European Union has been accompanied by a construction of the idea of Europeanness (Geary, 2013; Pieterse, 1991/1993), of belonging to a common us, creating an idea of what we are, as Europeans, and necessarily othering those who do not belong (Butler & Spivak, 2007; El-Tayeb, 2011). The so-called “refugee/migration crisis” is a particularly interesting context in which to explore discourses not only about this us/them divide regarding what are presented as non-Europeans, but also who we Europeans are constructed as being. The media play an important role in the reproduction of representations about others, with whom the audience does not have direct contact. In this article, we explore discourses, in the Portuguese and German media, from 2011 to 2017, about the so-called “refugee/migration crisis”. Through a qualitative content analysis, we have sought to understand how the idea of Europeanness is constructed, in relation to this phenomenon. This exploratory analysis allowed us to identify that there is not only a construction of the idea of Europe in which migrants or refugees are the other, but also of an idea of Europe that is intrinsically incompatible with the rejection of this other, incompatible with far-right or xenophobic ideas and movements. Being European, thus, is being not a Muslim, not a refugee, and not xenophobic.