Constructing the refugee: Comparison between newspaper coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis in Canada and the UK

Abstract

The media play a key role in informing public opinion during refugee crises. Representations of refugees in the media shape public understanding of what a ‘refugee’ is and policy decisions over who to include or to exclude. Although extensive literature has examined representations of refugees in news media, few systematic comparative investigations look at discourses across types of immigration countries. In this article, the author compares news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis in Canada and the UK, to consider how media discourse is affected by a nation’s historical relationship with and current policies of immigration. The author follows existing literature in arguing that the dominant discourses in the newspapers racialize refugees through a ‘victim–pariah’ couplet, and further argues that this shared model of racialized representation serves the particular nation-building projects and asylum regimes in the two countries. In addition, a comparison between coverage in newspapers that represent divergent political orientations shows that news stories that attempt to ‘give voice’ to refugees are more prevalent in the more left-leaning newspapers in both countries. Nonetheless, these attempts to ‘re-humanize’ refugees do not invalidate the Orientalist image of refugees as passive victims without agency and history.