Sounds of the Jungle: Restoring the migrant voice on new media

Abstract

In this paper we examine the cross-border tensions presented by the refugee settlement dubbed the ‘Jungle in Calais’. Calais has been the focal point of debates about illegal entry into the United Kingdom. The ‘Jungle’ as a physical entity is often enmeshed into debates of illegality and violation of the White suburbia through the unauthorised movement of the migrant. In mainstream media debates, the migrant is rendered voiceless often appropriated into discourses of immigration policy and transgression of territorial borders. The human trauma of migration is silenced through the distancing of the human subject in media discourses. We analyse how civil society organisations and interest groups use new media to restore the voice of the migrant enabling them to tell their stories through narratives and images not shown in mainstream media. The restoring of the voice to the migrant becomes an important device in enabling proximity and the reconstitution of the migrant as real and human. It stands in juxtaposition to the distance-framing techniques of mainstream media where a de-humanisation perspective works to situate the migrant as a disruptive contaminant in civilised and ordered society.