Media construction of migration in Mediterranean Sea: non-citizenship in Spanish press?

The main purpose of the present article is to uncover the account of the Spanish press about migrants who try to cross the European Union border but find themselves at a standstill caused by the strong surveillance. In order to that, we use both content analysis and critical discourse analysis of a news sample of several national newspapers, specifically of those news which inform about irregular migration in the Mediterranean Sea. We haven't found huge differences in the news treatment offered by selected newspapers. The way that the discourse concerning migration is elaborated follows the logic of European migration policy, which is based on the externalization of borders (the management of EU borders abroad) and the state and media production of the statute of irregularity of migrants. According to the discourse of the media, migrants are reflected in most cases as passive agents, mafia victims or assisted by different entities. Sometimes they appear as actors using violence to reach their purpose while the image of them as an active subject which is not linked to conflicts is limited. To sum up, the prevailing discourse "takes citizenship away" from these people, as we have seen in the analyses of the different media outlets.