Gendered Constructions of Migration in Europe an Intersectional Analysis of Inclusionary and Exclusionary Discourses on Social Media Platforms

This presentation explores intersectional discourses of migration and gender in the social media environments of three different European countries – Belgium, Greece, and Italy. Through a discursive analysis, we identify 1) an inclusionary discourse providing constructions of gender that welcome migrants in European societies articulated around the nodal points of empathy and care, visibility, equality and the acknowledgement of societal relevance; and 2) an exclusionary discourse providing constructions of gender that prohibit the inclusion of migrants in European societies, articulated through the nodal point of threat, as a burden, as radically different and irrelevant or invisible. For the analysis, we retrieved a dataset of 1000 posts per country about migration from Facebook and Twitter (now X) and we selected posts with a gender dimension. There is a lot of research about how traditional media, such as the press or TV and radio broadcast, report on migration in Europe, but less is known about what the role of social media – characterised by a mix of mainstream media agents and citizens journalism – is in representing migration in Europe. The paper shows the intensity over the discursive struggle over migration and how gender becomes activated in the struggle across the left/right-wing political spectrum in Europe.

[the paper was written as part of the EUMEPLAT Horizon project and apart from the listed authors for this conference the rest of co-authors are: 1. Carpentier, Nico 2. Lagrange, Babette 3. Van Bauwel, Sofie 4. Hroch, Milos 5. Doudaki, Vaia 6. Ingebretsen, Jim. 7. Archontaki, Ioanna].