Reading Media Framing of Moroccan Migrants
Some time ago, dozens of Moroccans were reported swimming towards Ceuta, crossing the Mediterranean Sea towards Spain. Images capturing those moments were repeatedly published and displayed on the front pages of newspapers, on European television screens, and filled social media across the globe. However, what is interesting about this coverage lies not merely in the reporting of the event itself, but in how the event was narrated.
In much of the coverage, Moroccans were first introduced as illegal migrants, a “wave of illegal migrants”, “infiltrators”, or a “threat to borders” before the public learned who they were, why they came, or what they had left behind. Their identities seemed to have been fully constructed by language and the media.
Language is often regarded as a tool for describing reality. Yet, more than that, language also shapes reality itself. The words chosen by the media can determine which aspects are considered important and which aspects disappear from public attention. In this process, language is frequently used not only to report on the world, but also to help construct it. It is here that words often turn into walls.
In the case of these Moroccans, much international coverage often directed attention first towards the threat to European borders rather than highlighting the stories of human beings risking their lives. A headline stating “a wave of migrants storms the border” certainly conjures a different image compared to a headline reading “hundreds of people risk their lives crossing the sea”. In this context, the facts reported may be equally true, but the social meaning produced can differ.
Furthermore, linguistic choices do not stand alone. In critical discourse analysis, Teun A. van Dijk shows that discourse often reproduces power relations within texts. When a particular group is continually associated with criminality, chaos, or disorder, society may come to accept such associations as natural. In reality, what appears as “reality” is often the result of repeated narratives.
Robert M. Entman explains in his framing theory that the media works by selecting certain elements of an event to make more salient. Seemingly simple choices such as headlines, diction, photographs, or quoted sources have an enormous impact in constructing meaning. When news speaks more often about “border security” than “saving human lives”, the reader’s focus shifts from humanitarian concerns to security concerns.
Framing, in this sense, does not alter facts, but it changes how facts are understood. Moreover, photographs of overcrowded boats, barbed-wire fences, armed patrols, and crowds of running migrants do not merely serve as visual documentation. When combined with narratives of “crisis”, “invasion”, or “threat”, such images can build the myth that migration is synonymous with danger, so that gradually readers no longer see distinct individuals, but rather a category regarded as uniform.
Indeed, every country has the right to regulate its borders, determine entry procedures, and enforce immigration rules. However, beyond legal matters, there is another equally important issue: how media language shapes public perception of who is deemed worthy of acceptance and who is positioned as a threat.
The media does not simply convey facts. The media selects which facts to highlight, which facts to set aside, and what language to use in explaining an event. It is these choices that form what is called framing.
In the case of Moroccan migration to Spain, framing often places the issue on the aspect of border security. Headlines such as “Wave of Illegal Migrants Storms Ceuta” or “Hundreds of Migrants Breach the Border” immediately direct readers’ attention to words like wave, breach, or storm. Such diction creates the impression that those arriving are not individuals with diverse backgrounds, but rather a mass threatening state stability.
Linguistically, the context of these words is commonly used for natural disasters or military operations, so when applied to human beings, such language builds the impression that migrants are no longer individuals with diverse backgrounds, but an anonymous mass that must be confronted. Yet linguistic choices always carry consequences, just as the same photograph can produce different meanings when framed differently.
A man carrying his child amid the waves can be understood as an “infiltrator” or as “a father risking his life for his family’s future”. The visual facts presented may be the same, but the social meaning can change depending on how the media constructs the narrative.
Furthermore, the public certainly has the right to support orderly and secure border management. However, at the same time, the public also needs to be critical of language that can be used to describe human beings. For when a label erases a person’s life story, family, struggle against death, and reasons for migrating, we are no longer reading reality in its entirety. We are reading a reality that has been selected for us.
The issue of migration is not merely a legal matter, but also a matter of humanity and representation. The way we speak about migrants will determine the way we treat them. Before we readily accept the label “illegal migrant”, perhaps it is worth asking first: is what we are seeing a violation of law, or a narrative that slowly makes some human beings appear unworthy of acceptance?
Migration is indeed not a simple issue. The state has the right to guard its borders, regulate migration flows, and enforce immigration law. At the same time, every person who migrates also carries a story, reasons, and conditions that cannot always be reduced to a single category. The challenge for the media is to explain that complexity without erasing one side of it.
Ultimately, migration will continue to be part of human history. People will continue to move because of war, poverty, climate change, education, or the hope of a better life. What will determine the quality of our civilisation is not only how states manage their borders, but also how the media and society choose to see them — whether as threats to be feared, or as human beings whose stories deserve to be understood before being judged.