Visual Portrayals of Migrants as Threats or Victims Are Reductive—But Can Have Far-Reaching Impact
March 5, 2025
Feature
By Karolina Nikielska-Sekuła
Visual portrayals—including photographs, films, graphics, and short videos—have long been used to shape and inform public discussions. Media outlets, advocacy and other nongovernmental organizations, politicians and governments, international organizations, and others necessarily use images to illustrate their work and accentuate their messaging. These visuals are far from inconsequential, and in fact can bolster or undermine public perceptions of the actions, intentions, and impacts migrants have on receiving societies. This is especially the case for asylum seekers, who arrive without prior authorization to enter the country where they are seeking refuge, but also holds true for other types of irregular arrivals as well as refugees.
Scholars have categorized visual representations of irregular and humanitarian migration into two dominant themes: the threat discourse, portraying immigration as a challenge to security or stability, and the humanitarian discourse, emphasizing migrants’ harsh conditions and misery. These two narratives were on full display during the 2015-16 period in the European Union, when 2.5 million asylum seekers and other migrants arrived in the bloc. A decade later, these two themes continue to dominate public imagery of asylum seekers and others traveling irregularly, including those crossing the Mediterranean, arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border, at the EU-Belarus border, and crossing the English Channel. They set the tone for how forced and irregular migration is visually depicted in many countries worldwide.
In This Article:
Common visual portrayals may include threatening depictions of migrants as faceless masses or appeal to compassion with imagery of suffering
These narratives are employed to build support for various policies and practices, including border restrictions and migrant-serving aid
Artistic and academic practices offer alternative approaches that seek to restore individuals’ agency
The stark, devastating images of a drowned Syrian toddler on a Turkish beach had a near-immediate and measurable impact on humanitarian policy in the United Kingdom, Canada, and other countries. And the endless TV footage and images of asylum seekers and other migrants marching through dense South American jungle, atop trains traveling through Mexico, or massing at the U.S.-Mexico border played an opposite role: hardening the U.S. public against humanitarian migrants.
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/visual-portrayals-migration
