On migrants and borders

Halfway through 2023, we now have, ready for analysis, all the journalistic pieces that dealt with migration issues in the main newspapers of Spanish-speaking countries throughout 2022. The time elapsed since their publication allows us to observe, with a certain distance and without the urgency inherent to the strictly informative sphere, what happened in that period of time, with the possibility of pointing out trends and differentiating isolated events from recurrent ones.

A review of the large amount of information and opinion generated by human migration over the course of 2022, in Europe and America, highlights the weight that security issues have in this subject, above other aspects involved (cultural, economic, educational, labour...) in such a multifaceted issue as migration. In a certain sense, we can speak of a synecdoche whereby the whole (migration) is identified primarily with one aspect (security, reduced to an even more specific and precise concept, the border), to the detriment of the others, distorting the overall perception of the issue.  

Thus, many of the key words that appear in the journalistic texts analysed refer to issues related to border security, overshadowing other migratory aspects and depriving the reader of a more complex and complete overview of the issue.

The information and opinions in the American newspapers focus on the description of the migratory movements that, throughout 2022, followed American citizens from different countries towards the north of the continent, arriving first at the southern border of Mexico (from Guatemala and Belize) with the final purpose, in most cases, of reaching the southern border of the United States. The media highlight the increase in migrant arrivals at the southern border of the United States in 2022 (37% more than in 2021, and more than double that in 2019), sometimes analysing the causes of this trend (which can be summarised as the general economic crisis in the region, insecurity and political instability in certain countries, and also the adverse effects of climate change). 

Other migration issues that are the focus of attention in the Hispanic press we handle (covering the entire continent, from El Mercurio in Chile to La Opinión in Los Angeles) also refer to borders and border security: the influx of undocumented migrants; the migratory crises (understood as situations of tension at the borders) that occur, in addition to the southern borders of Mexico and the United States, in Peru and Chile (on its border with Bolivia); the proposals to modify the laws that regulate immigration in the United States (which include increased security on the border with Mexico as well as, in the period studied, the Biden Administration's repeal of the so-called "Title 42", a public health regulation that Trump rescued from oblivion in 2020 in the context of COVID-19 as an immigration control measure).

In the case of the news and opinions published in Spanish newspapers, the key concepts present in most documents are irregular immigration, illegal immigration and human rights; all three also emphasise the security issues that arise at the borders of different European countries (United Kingdom, Spain, Italy, Germany), as well as the legal consequences of some of the measures adopted to contain migratory flows.

This focus on border security, which postpones other migration issues (of which the creation in 2004 of Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is a paradigm and summary at the European level), has provoked, as a reaction, some proposals aimed at resituating migration phenomena in a different framework, which would involve opening the borders of destination countries in a gradual, orderly and joint manner, something that sounds utopian at present, and which requires a profound reconceptualisation of migration. Thus, Alex Sager (author of "Against Borders: Why the World Needs Free Movement of People") advocates, from a philosophical perspective, this opening of borders. In the field of economics, Bryan Kaplan and Zach Weinersmith analyse in "Open borders. The Science and Ethics of immigration" (an intelligent - and readable - graphic essay), the economic (but not only) consequences that the abolition of borders would bring. 

Of course, other issues related to migration also appear in the journalistic texts of the Spanish and American media, but their presence and weight in the whole are lesser: this is the case of the Ukrainian refugees (relevant only in the European geographical sphere), the increase of "Venezuelans displaced abroad" (as they are called by UNHCR), Spain's political relations with Morocco, the new ways of instrumentalising immigration (the case of Belarus), and so on. 

In short, a reading of all these journalistic pieces (more than 2,400) allows us to appreciate the predominance of issues related to borders and the security issues linked to them in the information and opinions on migration, in such a way that this dominant position makes, by contrast, other aspects of migration which should undoubtedly be taken into account in order to construct a more complex and richer representation of human migration, more in line with the reality of which we are trying to give an account. 
 
Luis Guerra holds a PhD in Philology and is a researcher in communication and migration.