Chapter published in:
Migration and Media: Discourses about identities in crisis
Edited by Lorella Viola and Andreas Musolff
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 81] 2019
► pp. 239–262

Chapter 10
Representation of unaccompanied migrant children from Central America in the United States

Media vs. migrant perspectives

This chapter examines the representation of unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America (namely Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador) in U.S. online national news sources over a one-year period and compares this to the way these children talk about their own perceptions of migration and their motivation for moving. Data collection consisted of online news reports on unaccompanied minors from Central America in the United States as well as interviews with children collected from the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations. Multimodal critical discourse analysis reveals a qualitative difference in discourse (e.g., use of metaphor, metonymy, deixis and visual elements) that varies depending on whether the sources are media reports or personal accounts from the children themselves.
Keywords: Unaccompanied migrant children, Central America, media discourse, multimodal critical discourse analysis
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Relevant research
  • 4.Theoretical foundations
  • 5.Method
  • 6.Findings
    • 6.1National coverage (2016)
    • 6.2Counter voices: Metaphors of migrant discourse
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 07 March 2019
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.81.11cat
References
Agar, Michael H.
1996 The Professional Stranger, 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Antony, Mary Grace, and Ryan J. Thomas
January 25, 2016 “‘Stop Sending your Kids Across the Border.’ Discursively Constructing the Unaccompanied Youth Migrant.”Journal of International and Intercultural Communication. Retrieved from: Crossref 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Catalano, Theresa, and Linda R. Waugh
2013 “The Ideologies Behind Crime Reports of Latinos and Wall Street/CEOs: A Critical Analysis of Metonymy in Text and Image.” Critical Discourse Studies 10 (4): 406–426. Crossref.Google Scholar
Catalano, Theresa
2014 “The Roma and Wall Street/CEOs: Linguistic Construction of Identity in U.S. and Canadian Crime Reports.” International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2016 Talking about Global Migration: Implications for Language Teaching. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017 “When Children are Water: Representation of Central American Migrant Children in Public Discourse and Implications for Educators.” Journal of Latinos and Education, 1–19. Crossref.Google Scholar
Charteris-Black, Jonathan
2004 Corpus approaches to critical metaphor analysis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Chouliaraki Lilie & Fairclough Norman
(eds.) 1999 Discourse in late modernity: Rethinking critical discourse analysis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Corchado, Alfredo
2014 “Putting brakes on a dream.” The Dallas Morning News. Retrieved from: http://​res​.dallasnews​.com​/interactives​/migrants/ 02/10/2016
Fairclough, Norman
2015 Language and Power 3rd Edition. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman, Jane Mulderrig, and Ruth Wodak
2011 “Critical discourse analysis.” In Discourse studies, ed. by Teun A. van Dijk, 357–378. Thousand Oaks: Sage.Google Scholar
Garin, Emily, Jan Beise, Lucia Hug, and Danzhen You.
September 7, 2016 “Uprooted: the Growing Crisis for Refugee and Migrant Children.” UNICEF. Retrieved from: http://​www​.unicef​.org​/emergencies​/childrenonthemove​/uprooted/ 07/09/2016.
Geertz, Clifford
1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Ian
March 19, 2017 “Inside Trump’s Border Crackdown on Women and Kids.” Mother Jones. Retrieved from: http://​www​.motherjones​.com​/politics​/2017​/03​/central​-america​-asylum​-seekers​-trump​-deportation 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Grant, Barry Kieth
(Ed.) 2012 Film Genre Reader IV. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Heidbrink, Lauren
2014 Migrant youth, transnational families, and the state: Care and contested interests. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Hiskey, Jonathan T., Abby Córdova, Diana Orcés, and Mary Fran Malone
February 1, 2016 “Understanding the Central American Refugee Crisis: Why They are Fleeing and How U.S. Policies are Failing to Deter them.” American Immigration Council. Retrieved from: https://​www​.americanimmigrationcouncil​.org​/research​/understanding​-central​-%09american​-refugee​-crisis 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Holpuch, Amanda
July 26, 2016 “US Partners with Costa Rica to Protect Central American Refugees.” The Guardian. Retrieved from https://​www​.theguardian​.com​/world​/2016​/jul​/26​/central​-american​-refugees​-costa​-rica%09​-obama​-administration 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Horowitz, Jason
September 20, 2016 “Donald Trump Jr’s Skittles Tweet Fits a Pattern.” The New York Times. Retrieved from: http://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2016​/09​/21​/us​/politics​/donald​-trump​-jr​-skittles​.html​?_r​=0 02/10/2016Google Scholar
“
In-Country Refugee/Parole Processing for Minors in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala Central American Minors – CAM)” July 26, 2016 Retrieved from: https://​www​.uscis​.gov​/CAM 02/10/2016
Kövecses, Zoltan
2015 Where Metaphors Come from: Reconsidering Context in Metaphor. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Krzyzanowski, Michal
2011 Ethnography and critical discourse analysis: Towards a problem-oriented research dialogue. Critical Discourse Studies 8(4): 231–238. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson
1980 Metaphors we Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lind, Dara
July 29, 2014 “14 Facts that Help Explain America’s Child-Migrant Crisis.” Vox. Retrieved from: http://​www​.vox​.com​/2014​/6​/16​/5813406​/explain​-child​-migrant​-crisis​-central​-america​-unaccompanied​-children​-immigrants​-daca 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Linthicum, Kate
February 1, 2017 “Also Barred by Trump's Executive Order: These Heavily Vetted Kids from Central America.” Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from: http://​www​.latimes​.com​/world​/mexico​-americas​/la​-fg​-central​-american​-refugees​-20170131​-story​.html 25/03/2017Google Scholar
Machin, David, and Andrea Mayr
2012 How to Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Musolff, Andrea
2012 “The Study of Metaphor as Part of Critical Discourse Analysis.” Critical Discourse Studies 9(3): 301–310. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Musolff, Andreas
2016 Political Metaphor Analysis: Discourse and Scenarios. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Petersoo, Pille
2007 “Reconsidering Otherness: Constructing Estonian Identity.” Nations and Nationalism 13 (1): 117–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Portero-Muñoz, Carmen
2011 “Noun-noun Euphemisms in the Language of the Global Financial Crisis.” Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies 33 (2): 137–157.Google Scholar
Robles, Frances, and Kirk Semple
2017 “Trump’s New Ban Leaves Few Spots for Refugees, Even the Hunted.” The New York Times, 7 March 2017; Retrieved from: https://​www​.nytimes​.com​/2017​/03​/07​/world​/americas​/trump​-refugee​-ban​-children​-central​-america​.html​?_r​=0 25/03/2017Google Scholar
Santa Ana, Otto
1999 “Like an Animal I was Treated: Anti-immigrant Metaphor in US Public Discourse.” Discourse and Society. 10: 191–224.Google Scholar
2002 Brown tide rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary U.S. Public Discourse. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
2013 Juan in a Hundred: The Representation of Latinos on Network News. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
2016 "The Cowboy and the Goddess: Television News Mythmaking about Immigrants." Discourse & Society 27 (1): 95–117. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Steen, Gerard J., Aletta G. Dorst, Berenike J. Herrmann, Anna A. Kaal, Tina Krennmayr, and Trijntje Pasma
2010 A Method for Linguistic Metaphor Identification. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stinchcomb, Dennis, and Hershberg, Eric
2014 “Unaccompanied Migrant Children from Central America: Context, Causes, and Responses.” Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. CLALS working paper 7: 1–39.Google Scholar
Strom, Megan, and Emily Alcock
2017 "Floods, waves, and surges: the representation of Latin@ immigrant children in the United States mainstream media." Critical Discourse Studies 14, (4): 440-457.Google Scholar
van Leeuwen, Theo
2008 Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Waugh, Linda R., Catalano, Theresa, Al Masaeed, Khaled, Hong Do Tom, and Renigar, Paul
2015 “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Approaches, Relation to Pragmatics, Critique, Trends and New Directions.” In Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society, ed. by Capone, Alessandro, and Mey, Jacob, 71–136. Berlin: Springer Verlag.Google Scholar
Westcott, Lucy
. September 6 2016 “Number of Unaccompanied Child Refugees has Tripled since 2014: U.N.” Newsweek. Retrieved from: http://​www​.newsweek​.com​/unacommpanied​-child​-refugees​-unicef​-report​-496218 02/10/2016Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Catalano, Theresa & Linda R. Waugh
2020.  In Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies and Beyond [Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, 26], ► pp. 219 ff. Crossref logo
Zhao, Kai
2021. Book review: Theresa Catalano and Linda R Waugh, Critical Discourse Analysis, Critical Discourse Studies and Beyond. Discourse Studies 23:4 ► pp. 566 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 01 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.