Representation of unaccompanied migrant children from Central America in the United States: Media vs. migrant perspectives

Authors

Theresa Catalano, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Jessica Mitchell-McCollough, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2019

Citation

Published in Migration and Media. Discourses about identities in crisis. Edited by Lorella Viola and Andreas Musolff.

doi:10.1075/dapsac.81.11cat

Comments

Copyright © 2019 John Benjamins Publishing Company. Used by permission.

Abstract

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.