Depicting Political Dynamics of Migrant “Blackness” in the Era of Trumpism

Abstract

This chapter investigates representations of blackness in the social and political context of the migrant and refugee “crisis” in America. A content analysis of mainstream online news articles examines British reporting on the separation of migrant children from families in the US. It includes a critical analysis focusing on framing theory to deconstruct political framing of migrants in British news reporting. It considers the implications of “otherization” on political resolutions for race-based demographics, on the basis of social class. This chapter demonstrates the media's ability to apply a process of otherization to itself to support its institutionalized state and demonstrates otherization is a cyclic process of interchangeable identities, ideologies and intersectional contexts projected through a manufactured mediated prism and lens.