Depictions of Asylum Seekers in Canadian Media

Abstract

Media are often the principal way for citizens of a state to obtain knowledge about other individuals and to indirectly interact with them. Thus, this research seeks to determine how asylum seekers, who are often thought of as being welcomed in Canada due to the image the nation projects of itself, are depicted in Canadian printed media. This study focuses on the Tamil asylum seekers who arrived by sea in 2009, the Syrian refugees who were mainly flown in by the Canadian government in 2015, and the irregular asylum seekers who crossed the border between the United States and Canada in 2017. Newspaper articles published in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Vancouver Sun, the Toronto Star and the Winnipeg Free Press were analyzed by using framing techniques based on Entman's (1993) concept of frame. The findings demonstrate that different groups of asylum seekers are both depicted in similar and dissimilar manners. There is a tendency for them and their country of origin to be Othered and spoken of negatively. However, the way these asylum claimants arrive within the state’s territory play a role in shaping the way they are represented in media. Should they arrive without prior authorization from the state, asylum seekers will generally be depicted as embodiments of the state’s fear of losing control over its territory, its people, and its power to establish who is Us and who is Them.