Global Mobility and the Media: Presenting Asylum Seekers as a Threat

Abstract

Just after the summer holiday season had started in late June 1999, the Finnish media began reporting the numbers of Slovakian Roma asylum seekers.The public heard about Roma who were 'flooding', 'flowing', and 'mass immigrating' Finland.The Finnish government stopped the process two weeks after the media began to report by imposing a temporary visa requirement for Slovakian citizens.All together Finland received a thousand asylum seekers from Slovakia during a three week period in summer 1999.By Finnish standards this was an exceptionally high number.The media framed the Roma as 'economic refugees'.Instead of expressing this accusation explicitly the media constructed an image of a shady group of people with illegitimate reasons from more subtle details.This article identifies five key themes that were chosen to frame the story: the flood theme, the illegitimacy theme, the fortress theme, the reputation theme, and the lax policy theme.Choosing these themes the media constructed an image of asylum seekers which enter the country without true reasons, therefore they present a threat to the society as well as to its asylum and human rights policies.'Economic refugees' is a catch phrase that has been repeated in the everyday language of the Finns since the early 1990's.The Finns who have left the country for a better future to neighbouring Sweden or to more distant places have been regarded as adventurous, active, and having courage.The label 'economic refugees', however, has a negative connotation and it is being used to characterize some immigrants and refugees coming to Finland.It refers to laziness and illegitimate reasons.It is used especially in everyday language, not so much in ad-ministrative discourse.This article investigates how the media deal with the issue.It suggests that the media play a central role in the making of 'economic refugees'.Textual and visual details are analyzed with discourse and frame analysis.Moreover, journalistic genres and professional practices are studied.The case is also investigated from the perspective of globalization theory.The practical research question is: How do the media represent asylum seeking and the Roma?Is there any variation between media and genre?But the broader question is: How does the representation relate to globalization?Mobility is one characteristic of globalization.However, only some people are welcome to move around, while others are being pushed away.The media are significantly involved with the process of constructing and defining distances, borders, and otherness. Mobility: Diasporas of Fantasy and Diasporas of DespairThe popular diagnosis of our time (since the 1980's) emphasizes globalization.It suggests that the world we live in is no longer divided much by state borders.Money, goods, images, and people move across nation-state borders which used to characterize the modern world.And they move at an increasing speed.The divisions are still there, however.Not everyone or everyone's goods, images or money are able to move in an equal way.As Zygmunt Bauman (1998, 2) formulates it, the uses of time and space are sharply differentiated as well as differentiating.Globalization divides as much as it unites.Globalization theory also refers to compression of time and space.Though distances have shrunk and lost meaning for some people, they can move easily and freely in global and local settings, time is