On 23rd June 2020, The Global Research Forum for Diaspora and Transnationalism organised a virtual seminar on the topic “Media Narratives on Migrants during COVID-19”. The insightful session sought to address the dominant media narratives of the media relating to the migrants’ lives both national and international migrants during COVID-19.
One of the panelists, ‘Ismail Einashe’, is an award-winning journalist and writer covering migration, human rights and international news. He has written for The Guardian, BBC News, Foreign Policy and The Nation, among many others. Currently, he is a Senior Journalist working on a project ‘Lost in Europe’, which is a cross border investigative journalism project about the disappearances of child migrants in Europe. In his talk, he elucidated how the COVID-19 has exposed migrants as the most marginalised people in the pandemic.
He initially stated that the Southern European countries of Italy, Greece and Spain mark as the entry points for migrants arriving in Europe from the Middle East, Asia and Africa. There are two key exit routes for migrants in Africa, either through the Horn of Africa into the Middle East via Yemen or through Libya into Southern Europe (Sicily). Due to the pandemic, thousands of migrants are stuck in transit ports and they aren’t able to move, leave or go back home because the world has come to a standstill. Thousands of Ethiopian migrants face a lot of discrimination and stigma in Somalia and Djibouti. The situation in the exit points in Libya is also worse firstly due to the Libyan Civil War, secondly, the detention centres where migrants are held are in dismal conditions.
In Greece, the situation is bad usually, and due to COVID-19 the situation of migrants and refugees have become intolerable with around 120,000 migrants in camps and the extension of lockdown by the government. The Greek government is led by a reactionary Right-Wing party which has used this as an opportunity to spread its agenda. “The COVID-19 has presented states, particularly European States, with an opportunity to enact border policies”, claims Einashe. For instance, Austria effectively suspended the right to asylum using the threat of COVID-19 as justification. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, out of 167 countries that have fully or partially closed their borders to deal with COVID-19, 57 of them have not made an exception for those seeking asylum.
He concluded by discussing the media coverage of migrants during the pandemic. The media framing of migrants was already reactionary and xenophobic and the COVID-19 has spread that process even further. Rumours and fake news have framed migrants as carriers of the disease which has led to an increase on racist and xenophobic attacks. The outbreak of COVID-19 in Berlin saw people saying in the media that migrants are using COVID-19 as an opportunity in Germany to riot. The pandemic could do serious damage to migrant rights everywhere and states have used this opportunity to shut down borders and target migrants.
Mohsina Noorien, The writer is an MPhil graduate from Centre for West Asian Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia. Her areas of interest include identity politics, conflict and security, foreign policy, bilateral relations, diplomacy and refugee crisis. Twitter: @MohsinaNoorien.