Enter the Boogeyman : representations of human smuggling in mainstream narratives of migration

Abstract

The study focuses on the visual depiction of smugglers in the two main Italian newspapers between 2015 and 2016 – a key destination and transit country during the so-called migrant crisis”. What they show is that against a general hysteria about the smuggler in narratives on human and national security, the subject is rather absent at the visual level. The divergence between the narrative overrepresentation of the smugglers and their concomitant visual absence in mainstream channels of communication – the authors argue – ultimately fuels increasingly punitive migration regimes in Italy and, at large, the European Union.