La migración irregular en la ruta de África occidental: xenofobia y discurso público en los medios de comunicación

Abstract

This research examines, both in its discursive dimension and in its social and ideological dimension, the public discourse of the media of the Canary Islands against irregular migration arriving to its coasts through the West African route. For this purpose, based on a corpus consisting of opinion articles published in the regional press with the largest circulation in the period between January 2018 and March 2021, we analyze the conceptual metaphors to which the authors of the texts resort to build the negative portrait of this phenomenon, which they inter pret, represent and evaluate as a threat that puts the welfare of the receiving society at risk. The metaphors identifi ed confi gure a xenophobic narrative re fl ecting the perception of those who feel the threat represented by the constant arrival of precarious boats. This narrative consti tutes the counterpoint to the narratives of solidarity also identi fi ed in the Canarian press through voices that align themselves with the irregular migration arriving to the islands and which are examined in other papers.