Oct 18, 2006 - inmigrante en Ciutat Vella de Barcelona, Madrid,. Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2002. NASH, M., âConstrucción social de la ...
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Rethinking Media Representations of Immigrant Women Mary Nash. Professor of Contemporary History, Universitat de Barcelona
The mass media plays a determining role in the creation of public opinion. The news, information, opinions expressed and the cultural representations projected, both in the audiovisual and written media, constitute a decisive universe of discourses that create values, attitudes and judgements with respect to our social, cultural and political environment. Studies by specialists on intercultural processes have indicated the continuity of discriminatory discursive practices (Aramburu, 2002; Nerín, 2002; Nerín and López, 1999; Ribas Bisbal, 2002). Without doubt, the revision of discursive practices with respect to the immigrant “other” has progressed significantly. However, there is still a significant deficit in the revision of media discourse on immigrant women. Analysis of the predominant cultural representations of immigrant women allows us to approach the processes of construction of an imagined community for them and to offer some explanatory elements in terms of social practices in our multicultural society. We believe that analysis of cultural representations is of great interest given that they affect collective beliefs and, more specifically, the for-
mation of an imagined community that can mould everyday practices with respect to the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups such as immigrant women (Nash, 2004). How social groups are labelled is decisive in the construction of shared cultural beliefs. In the case of immigrant women, the importance of cultural representations lies in their capacity to convey behavioural norms and transmit collective codes to them. Our work on cultural representations of immigrant women in the recent Spanish press (Nash, 2000; Nash, 2004) has shown a series of consistent patterns in their designation based on two main focal points: the postcolonial ethnocentric conceptualisation common to immigrant women and men and, specifically, the andocentric conceptualisation of gender discourse.1 In this sense we believe that there is a constant interaction on the dynamic of gendered power relations and the articulation of a collective experience of immigrant women as a cultural minority. The perspective of the dual otherness of gender and minority constitutes a decisive cultural mechanism that denies a role to women, subordinates
1. Our analysis of the media discourse on immigrants is been based on the national daily newspapers El País, El Periódico de Catalunya, El Mundo and La Vanguardia during the mid-1990s (Nash, 2004).
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them to collective projects and ethnicizes them in cultural terms.
The perspective of the dual otherness of gender and minority constitutes a decisive cultural mechanism that denies a role to women The media engagement with the issue of female immigration does not reflect its real weight in society given that the media discourse generates a field of meanings based on the silence that makes immigrants invisible, creating a current of public opinion that minimizes their presence and recognition. This invisibilizing discourse has repercussions on the collective imaginary of immigration which has very negative consequences, given that it excludes women from a migratory model falsely based on a masculine one. The perpetuation of a masculine model to form the popular approach to the migratory phenomenon has meant a slanted vision that denies the current feminization of immigration. It can be an explanatory factor of the habitual lack of specific gender perspectives in the articulation of public integration policies and, therefore, of their inefficacy on certain occasions. There is a complex repertoire of subalternity in the media treatment of immigrant women, among them the uses of traditional gender discourse. A key parameter of gendered discourse has been identified as prevalent in the press: the ongoing definition of immigrant women from the perspective of domesticity. To the extent that the image of an immigrant woman is emphasised, her family status and a traditional model of a married woman, dependent, passive and limited to the domestic space, stands out. Thus, the presence of immigrant women is evoked under the notion of family, maternity and reproduction with scarce recognition of feminine individuality or of the outstanding role of women who are on their own
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in the immigration trends. The notion that governs the media discourse is the definition of women in terms of a dependent, economically inactive person, contextualized in the framework of the family regrouping. The view of abandonment and of the lack of their own migration project strategies shapes this collective imaginary. In this sense, it ignores the plural agendas of immigrants as workers, often alone in their migratory experience (Nash, 2004). In fact, the traditional discourse of domesticity, out of step, to a great extent, with that of contemporary western women, is resurrected as a key interpretative parameter in the identity attribution of immigrant women. It is a model sustained, moreover, on a discourse of subalternity, dependence and lack of agency. However, in contrast to this traditional passive model, discursive strategies must encompass the image of the individual, motivated women who are the clear protagonists of their migration project. There is a broad range of activities, occupations and initiatives by enterprising immigrant women on their own in their new host society. Immigrant women, although not recognised, act as autonomous economic agents and not at all from the subalternity predominantly transmitted in media discourse. The homogenization of the feminine immigrant community is another discursive resource in the representation of this group. In this framework the identification of women as symbols of cultural otherness represents a significant discursive resource. The media’s invocation of community identity projects the feminine image from the language of cultural diversity beyond the individual in order to take on the symbolic representation of the entire immigrant community. The media community identity invocation projects the feminine image from the register of cultural diversity beyond the individual to take on the symbolic representation of a whole immigrant community. In this way, in the words of Nira Yuval-
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Davis, women become “carriers of the group” as biological and symbolic reproducers of the community (Yuval-Davis, 1997: 26). Ethnicizing the cultural differences and marking women as the carriers of essential timeless values means freezing them outside of the social dynamics with the demand for a permanence of behaviour that denies their capacity for personal and collective development. This process of discursive homogenization of immigrant women acquires another facet in the media discourse in creating a false cultural representation of these collectives as a unitary homogeneous nucleus. Their cultural otherness is expressed based on the profile of those furthest away from the local culture, with the pre-eminence of an archetype of immigrant woman put on the same level as the
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Muslim immigrant woman from the Maghreb. This feminine immigrant model becomes the point of reference of all immigrant women despite the fact that the data on feminine immigration provides a much more plural scenario. The heterogeneity of the composition of immigrant women is clear, although the media approaches focus above all on a uniform vision of cultural homogenization, which evokes a prototype of immigrant women especially from the image of the ethnic and cultural otherness which gives priority to the figure of the Muslim immigrant. The customary quota of visibility of immigrants in the mass media is generally linked to problems such as abuse, violence or prostitution. The media’s discursive engagements must include roles beyond those that are pre-
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assigned or those of misfortune in order to show the initiative and ability of women developing lives in their new host society. Media discourse exaggerates the points of conflict and proceeds to problematize them. As preferential attention is given to issues such as female circumcision, abuse and prostitution, an identity construction of the group as a whole based on marginality is reaffirmed. It is necessary to positively strengthen another referential chain linked more to normal feminine experience and to include a more integrative view of factors such as the world of work and other migratory projects for the vast majority of immigrant women.
The challenge for the future is to overcome the discrepancy between social reality and cultural representation with respect to the dual perspective of gender and immigrant From a multicultural democratic model, there is a clear need to see that the challenge of cultural diversity means integrating the gender dimension in its social and cultural expression and recognising cultural plurality and diversity. The challenge for the future is to overcome the discrepancy between social reality and cultural representation with respect to the dual perspective of gender and immigrant; in other words, of dual otherness. The exclusion of the voice of women in the press or the homogenization of intercultural relations from the point of view of a predominant masculine culture makes the process of establishing an intercultural democratic culture difficult. Meanwhile, the treatment of gender in the media can make the process of
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consolidation of the equity between men and women difficult. Rethinking the images of the other obliges us to question masculine cultural norms and requires the establishment of channels of recognition of authority and credibility for the plural voices of women as valid interlocutors of the community of immigrants in our society. References ARAMBURU, M., Los otros y nosotros. Imágenes del inmigrante en Ciutat Vella de Barcelona, Madrid, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, 2002. NASH, M., “Construcción social de la mujer extranjera”, in M.-À. Roque (dir.), Mujer y migración en el Mediterráneo occidental, Barcelona, Icaria editorial, 2000. NASH, M., Mujeres en el mundo. Historia, retos y movimientos, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2004. NERÍN, G., Escriure amb por. L’evolució de la imatge de l’immigrant en els diaris més llegits a Catalunya després de l’11 de setembre de 2001, Barcelona, Centre d’Estudis Africans, 2002 (unpublished). NERÍN, G. and L. LÓPEZ, La imatge de l’Àfrica negra en la televisió, Barcelona, Centre d’Estudis Africans, 1999 (unpublished). RIBAS BISBAL, M., “Discurs públic dominant i cognició social. La representació de la immigració que emergeix de les preguntes d’una Comissió d’estudi parlamentària”, in C. Lorda and M. Ribas Bisbal (eds.), Anàlisi del discurs polític. Producció, mediació i recepció. Jornades sobre Anàlisi del Discurs Polític (2000.Barcelona), Barcelona, Institut Universitari de Lingüística Aplicada, 2002. YUVAL-DAVIS, N., “Ethnicity, Gender Relations and Multiculturalism”, in P. Werbner and T. Modood (eds.), Debating Cultural Hybridity. Multi-cultural Identities and Politics of Anti-Racism, London, Zed Books, 1997.
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