New publication by Megan C. MacDonald, EURIAS Fellow 2018-2019

'Introduction: Gender, Migration, and the Media',

Mara Mattoscio & Megan C. MacDonald

Feminist Media Studies, vol. 18, no. 6, 2018, pp. 1117-1120, DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1532142.

"Across the sensationalist media coverage of recent migratory movements, generally labelled as the “refugee crisis,” crucial issues of gender, including health-care disparities, differential access to asylum and/or citizenship, and national policies on integration, have received ambiguous treatment. Cases of sexual violence suffered by migrants or visible gender identifications have mostly been framed in stereotypical ways, reinvigor- ating essentialist oppositions between the West, seen as “progressive and endangered,” and the rest of the world, deemed “backward and threatening.” Tales of trafficked women have, for instance, ended up constructing almost all forms of female mobility, with the notable exception of domestic work, as “high risk” and morally unadvisable (Felicity Schaeffer-Grabiel 2011; Enrica Rigo 2017). More nuanced understandings of the gendered complexities of migration, border surveillance, and media systems have been often overlooked (Radha Sarma Hegde 2011). [-]"