The Discursive Production of a Mexican Refugee Crisis in Canadian Media and Policy

This article examines the discursive continuity between newsprint representations of Mexican refugee claimants in 2007 and the subsequent visa policy imposed on Mexicans by the Canadian government. It argues that the production of a Mexican refugee crisis' in local media rested on three dominant discourses: the encoding of Mexicans as illegal, criminal and fraudulent Others; the perceived exorbitant costs of refugee claims; and the necessity to control illegitimate' claimants to prevent them from exploiting the deficiencies of the Canadian refugee system. Such discourses reveal overt and inferential forms of racism and challenges to the self-proclaimed tolerance of multicultural Canada. The paper is based on a review of newsprint articles and readers' opinions published in Windsor in 2007 and 2008. Three rhetorical devices were predominantly used in media discourseslexicons, the numbers game, and expert/authority legitimationto elevate the refugee influx to a level of crisis' and to perpetuate a positional superiority over refugee claimants.