The COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to bring the migration of agricultural workers into focus through media coverage

Abstract

In recent years, the interest in media representations of migrants and the media as a space for participation has increased within the field of migration studies. Yet, most scholars’ attention is focused on immigrants and the media in destination countries, while less attention is paid to origin countries and emigrants’ representation. Taking advantage of the increased attention paid to migrants and migration during the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, we investigated the media representations of Romanian migrants in agriculture who work in other European countries and interpreted how their voices could be heard through media accounts. Through content analysis, we investigated a sample of 297 articles published between 1^st April and 31^st May 2020 on the websites of the six most visible Romanian media outlets.

This study contributes to the existing knowledge on media representations of Romanian migrants by documenting a series of tendencies, including an event-oriented approach, oversimplified representations of migration, massification and schematisation of migrant representations, and the high sensitivity to reports from destination countries’ media on Romanian migrants.

Our analysis reveals that the approach taken to reporting on migration during the COVID-19 pandemic, at least during its first phase, highly depended on the existing, institutionalised modes of media reporting on migration.