Media Representations of Migrants in the Context of Providing Accommodation Locally

By conducting a qualitative content analysis of over 500 news articles, this research analyzed how migrants are framed in the context of providing accommodation locally in regional newspapers in the Netherlands. This context is especially relevant, as the local level has played an increasingly significant role in providing refugee accommodation since the perceived ‘crisis’ in migration governance in 2015 and 2016. Furthermore, this context is highly politicized and frequently covered in recent Dutch media. Media representations of migrants in general are already well explored. However, this research explores media representations of migrants in the context of providing accommodation locally. This research is a relevant contribution to the literature as it allows for a better understanding of the contextual factors influencing the ways migrants are framed in the media. Scholars have identified different important media representations of migrants, including humanitarian, security, and humanizing depictions. This research first looks at the extent to which these three migrant frames - humanitarian, security, and humanizing - are present in the sample, then analyzes the detailed contexts (e.g. the key topics of the news articles) in which these migrant frames do or do not appear. This study found the three frames of migrants (the humanitarian, security, and humanizing frame) in 34% of the news articles. Local residents and local governmental actors apply the humanitarian frame by connecting the arrival of migrants to the reason for which they are here (fleeing war and violence), which connects to ‘our’ moral plight to help them. These actors also apply the security frame by associating the arrival of migrants with worries about their own safety and socio-economic threats, such as the expectation of a decrease in home value or a decline in income from tourism. Local governmental actors and the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) apply the humanizing frame by sharing ‘normalizing’ details about their everyday routines and living spaces. In almost 66% of the news articles, the three frames were not applicable. This suggests that these three frames, identified as important, may not be significant in the representation of migrants in news articles in this context. However, another likely explanation for the absence of these frames in the sample lies in the prevalence of key topics like ‘update on accommodation’ and ‘local statistics (of regions in general)’ in the sample. These articles mostly provide readers with objective updates on specific local migrant accommodations or current statistics on general accommodation numbers in the municipality or province overall. Therefore, they do not enable an emphasis on migrants’ humanity or (un)desirability related to migrants’ ‘anticipated criminal activities’ or ‘need for protection’. This explains why humanitarian, security, or humanizing migrant representations are not present in these articles. Furthermore, even in news articles covering key topics such as ‘protest’, ‘conflict’, ‘support’, and ‘cooperation’, which could emphasize migrants’ humanity or (un)desirability, this emphasis did not always occur. Instead of presenting opposing opinions based on security frames or supportive opinions based on humanitarian frames, these news articles also featured other arguments unrelated to migrants themselves.