19 Apr 2007: ISS Today: The Discourse on Immigrants in the South African Press

19 April 2007: The Discourse on Immigrants in the South African Press

Images of a ‘flood of illegal aliens’ and ‘UFOs’ who bring with them disease, crime and poverty, illiteracy and various other social vices that threaten social, political and economic stability feature prominently in both official pronouncements and mainstream press. Quite a number of South Africans cite job losses, crime and disease as the negative consequences they fear from migrants living in the country (Matlosa, 2006).

Commentary

Media constructions are influential in representing immigrants as ‘others’ and often as criminals. The media constructions of immigrants in host countries are critical as they affect the reception that immigrants are accorded. The dominant immigrant description used in the South African mediais “IMMIGRANTS ARE ALIENS”. Apart from the ‘illegal alien’ description, which focuses on the illegal status of the immigrant, there is a general theme of the uncontrolled wave of immigrants expressed in descriptions of water with phrases such as ‘flood’ and ‘avalanche’. These descriptions of the behaviour of liquids have the potential to represent domestic nationals as threatened and as potential victims of a social disaster.

Ruiz (2002, 48) notes that the illegal alien stereotype is a powerful description in science and medicine. Foreign particles that enter the body and elicit an immune response are compared in popular and scientific representations of the immune system to ‘illegal aliens’ which become suspect because they cannot speak the ‘language’ of the body. If undocumented border-crossers are depicted as pathogens entering the bloodstream of the nation, then immigrants are seen not as people to be treated for disease but as threats to be treated against. The term ‘alien’, in popular culture suggests nonhuman beings invading from outer space — completely foreign, not one of us, intent on taking over our land and our way of life by gradually insinuating themselves among us. Hence, aliens are strangers; they are unknown, unfamiliar and foreign. Immigrants are often presented as threats, positioned as ‘them’ in relation to an assumed ‘us’. The Illegal immigrant description is perhaps the most commonly used to represent ‘illegal immigrants’. It frames the problem as one about the illegal act of crossing the border without the required papers. As a consequence, it fundamentally frames the problem as a legal one.

Immigration as a Disaster and a Threat

The largest group of liquid descriptions conceptualises immigration with a related image of excessive flow of water with usage of such words as ‘pour’ and ‘wave’. Such descriptions have permeated the South African media accounts of the growing Zimbabwean population in South Africa. Far from being mere figures of speech, these descriptions produce and sustain a negative public perception.

With regard to the destination of the migration, the nation is conceived as a container and the migration comprehended to be inward flowing stream. Hence:

We voluntarily switched off the apartheid electric border fence. But the economic meltdown in Zimbabwe is forcing us to think about how to contain the avalanche of illegal economic and political refugees from Zimbabwe. Failure to do something about this risks hostility from our unemployed and poor directed at the foreigners flooding into South Africa. If the hostility is minimal now, wait until our economy slows down (Sunday Times, 2006)

South Africa’ is conceptualised as a container battling to contain a flood of Zimbabwean immigrants. Such descriptions arouse fears of a build up of large numbers of immigrants within. The penetration of the container is potentially dangerous –- in the same manner as a leak in the ship can cause it to sink.

The descriptions also suggest a form of control of the illegal immigrants by the authorities. In a way, the human tide can be held back or the government can make attempts to stem the illegal tide of immigrants.

It is clear that many of the things we do in arguing are partly structured by the concept of war (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). While there is no physical battle, there is a verbal battle, and the structure of an argument -- attack, defence, counterattack, and so on -- reflects this. It is in this sense that the war description is constructed in the media:

South African officials are battling to cope with the stream of Zimbabweans crossing the Limpopo River (News 24, 2006)

The continual framing of migration in relation to crime and unemployment overlooks the positive contributions and brain gain for the recipient countries. The ‘illegal alien’ description disregards the questions of: Why are people migrating to South Africa? What services do they provide when they are in SA? Why do immigrants circumvent the legal channels? Apart from this, it also ignores the illegal acts of the employers. It is therefore necessary for there to be an open, informed, debate on issues of migration in the region. If South Africa, and SADC as a whole, are serious about implementing the Free Movement of People’s Protocol, change at the level of discourse is a first requirement.

Matlosa K, 2006. Human movements, common regional citizenship and identity in Southern Africa: Prospects for deeper integration between Lesotho and South Africa. Policy: Issues and Actors, 19 (3).

News 24, 2006. SA struggling with Zimbabwe’s illegal immigrants, 28 July 2006.

Ruiz, M l, 2002. Border narratives, HIV/AIDS and Latina/o health in the United States: A cultural analysis. Feminist Media Studies, 2 (1), pp 37-62.

Sunday Times, 2006. Register foreigners living in south Africa, for our own peace of mind, 6 October 2006.

Aquilina Mawadza, Researcher: Southern African Human Security Programme, ISS, Tshwane (Pretoria)