Picturing Immigration : Photojournalistic Representation of Immigrants in Greek and Spanish Press [1 ed.] 9781841505039, 9781841503608

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Picturing Immigration

The publication of this research was kindly supported by the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, Athens, Greece.

Picturing Immigration Photojournalistic Representation of Immigrants in Greek and Spanish Press

Athanasia Batziou

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First published in the UK in 2011 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2011 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA Copyright © 2011 Intellect Ltd Batziou, Athanasia. Picturing immigration : photojournalistic representation of immigrants in the Greek and Spanish press / by Athanasia Batziou. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84150-360-8 (alk. paper) 1. Immigrants--Press coverage--Greece. 2. Greece--Emigration and immigration--Press coverage. 3. Immigrants--Press coverage--Spain. 4. Spain--Emigration and immigration--Press coverage. 5. Photojournalism--Greece. 6. Photojournalism--Spain. I. Title. PN5237.I55B38 2010 305.9’0691209495022--dc22 2010037818 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: Ed Hatton Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire ISBN 978-1-84150-360-8 / EISBN 978-1-84150-503-9 Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.

Contents Introduction

7

PART I Chapter 1: 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

11 Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

The Visual (Re)turn Image, Reality, Photojournalism Media Stereotypes of the “Other” Framing Theory Visual Framing

13 15 18 22 24 28

Chapter 2: Greece and Spain: Background Information

33

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4

35 37 39 43 43 46 46 47 47 50

Overview of Migration History in Greece and Spain Immigrants in Greece and Spain during the Period of Study (2005) Immigration Policy in Greece and Spain Historical and Social Background of Greece and Spain History Economy Society Demographics Public Opinion and Immigrants Media and Migrants in Greece and Spain

PART II

55

Chapter 3: The Visual Representation of Immigrants

57

3.1 Frame A: The Immigrant as “Other” 3.2 Frame B: The Immigrant as “Threat” 3.3 Themes

59 73 83

Picturing Immigration

Chapter 4: Analysis

91

4.1 Frames and Schemata 4.2 Societies in Crisis: Immigration and Frames 4.3 Frames and the Media

93 97 101

Chapter 5: Conclusion

105

References

109

6

Introduction

“H

as it ever occurred to you that newspaper photographs show immigrants exactly the way they are?” I was asked by an acquaintance when I described the topic of my research to a group of friends on a night out. The music was too loud to engage in what would be a long conversation and maybe playfully return the irony to the know-it-all engineer who apparently shared the wide-spread conviction that media images present the world as it is. Besides, I didn’t have any results yet. Since then, however, it surprised me to find out, through conversations with friends, random people (for example, fellow travelers on a train), or even colleagues, how many people share the same view. “So, you study just images?” I was asked another time by a communication researcher at an international conference. Well, I accepted the challenge, and, yes, I studied “just” images and even wrote a book about them! And the truth is that after explaining some “why’s” and “how’s” regarding my research, everybody agreed that this was an extremely interesting and relevant topic to write a book about. This book looks at newspaper photographs of immigrants in two countries of the European South, Greece and Spain, during their most recent regularization programs. The aim is to identify and describe the image of the immigrant as it is constructed during that period in pictorial media discourse in the two countries. This is done by exploring the dominant frames and themes used in the visual representation of immigrants in the press, during a specific period of study and taking into account the social and cultural context of each country. At the same time, I also address issues pertaining to the ideology and style of newspapers and how they influence the visual representation of immigrants. A question I was often asked was, Why focus on Greece and Spain? There are actually a number of common characteristics that render these two countries ideal for a comparative study. They both constitute important entry points to the European Union for immigrants coming from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe. Both countries have been participating in the international phenomenon of migration for years, as countries of origin of a large number of people emigrating to North America, Australia, and Northern Europe. In the last fifteen years, they have been transformed into receivers of immigrants and are called to deal with a situation that countries with decades of experience in receiving, accommodating, and even integrating immigrants seem to have serious problems with.

Picturing Immigration

Defusing xenophobic tensions and achieving peaceful coexistence in multicultural societies seem to be two important challenges of our century. Given the fact that for the majority of the population in new receiver countries the formulation of opinion on immigrants is mediated and does not come from direct personal contact with immigrants, it is worth taking a look at how the media treat the issue. Verbal media discourse has been studied, analyzed, and revealed to a great extent. Pictorial media discourse, on the other hand, seems to be neglected as “speaking for itself ” and having nothing much to reveal. Hence, the challenge of studying images. In this book, photographs are isolated and treated as distinct units of analysis in their own right, independent of the accompanying text, with the aim to investigate the social messages they embody and reflect at the same time. As Lester Roushanzamir (2003) mentions, what matters in a critical textual analysis, is not so much content itself nor its social impact as it is the indication of social practices it provides. An image or a group of images incorporate social and cultural elements, political or social views, and perceptions without this being easily realized by the viewer nor being intended by the creator. A combination of methods is used for the identification and analysis of frames. Initially, content analysis was used in order to codify the sample. Next, the frames were identified, on the basis of the findings of content analysis and then analyzed in the context of cultural studies. In other words, content analysis is used as a tool for the identification of frames and cultural studies as a tool for their analysis. One might wonder why I focused on newspaper images in two countries where newspaper readership is low while television viewing time is high. Although this is true, we must keep in mind that these two media are used not only at a different frequency but also for different reasons that reflect the different value ascribed to them by users. Although the audience in Southern Europe shows a particular preference for television, this medium is selected mainly for entertainment. On the other hand, as Papatheodorou & Machin (2003) note about Greece and Spain in particular, reading newspapers remains an act that indicates political involvement and high cultural status. Newspapers are trusted more than television as sources of reliable information and they are considered more serious and professional than television. Daily newspapers with the highest circulation were selected from each country. These papers are El País, El Mundo and ABC in Spain, with an average monthly circulation during the period of study (2005) of 566,086, 420,157, and 338,711 papers respectively (Source: Oficina de Justificación de la Difusión). From Greece the selected newspapers are Ta Nea, Kathimerini and Eleftherotypia with an average daily circulation in 2005 of 74,602, 70,344 and 46,984 papers respectively (Source: Athens Daily Newspaper Publishers Association). The criterion for the selection of these newspapers was not only their circulation and prestige, but also their political orientation, so that the sample would reflect the dominant trends of the political spectrum. More analytically, ABC is a monarchist newspaper, El País and Ta Nea are newspapers of the Center Left, Eleftherotypia represents the Left and Kathimerini and El Mundo, the Center Right. They are all considered serious newspapers of opinion. 8

Introduction

The sample comprises photographs that were published in the newspapers of both countries during the last regularization programs: 7 February until 10 May 2005 in Spain (the regularization program ending on 7 May) and 1 October 2005 to 2 May 2006 in Greece. The selection of the specific time frames was based on the hypothesis that the media deal much more with the issue of immigration at a time when an event related to immigration takes place, such as a regularization program. These time frames coincided with important events in each country: the time frame for Spain includes the one-year commemoration of 11 March 2004, the day of the Islamic-terrorist suicide bombing of a train in Madrid. This event signaled a new era in Spain, a country where the largest immigrant group is Muslim, making it one of the countries stricken by Islamic- terrorists. However, pictures regarding the investigation of the terrorist attack were excluded from this study since they are part of a completely different topic, that of international politics/terrorism, and not immigration. In Greece, the time frame under study includes the Paris riots of November 2005, a series of events that shook Europe and caused new receiver countries like Greece to reflect on the situation of the immigrants “next door” and their potential future in light of the riots. Furthermore, this time frame includes the publication of accusations by Pakistani immigrants in Greece of having been kidnapped by the British secret services, detained, and interrogated illegally in the context of their investigations into international terrorism, with the tolerance of the Greek authorities. The issue developed into a scandal that occupied the Greek media for a long time. The inserts of each newspaper as well as the local editions of the Spanish newspapers were excluded from the research. Due to technical problems during sampling, data of two months (February and April 2005) from the Spanish newspaper ABC are absent. For this reason, the sampling for this newspaper was extended to the end of May, while in the other two Spanish papers it stops on 10 May, three days after the end of the regularization program. A total of 354 photographs were collected. Of these, 164 photographs were collected from the Spanish newspapers and 190 from the Greek ones. It is worth noting that the number of photographs collected from the two countries is not significantly different. This means that the Spanish newspapers actually contain a proportionally greater number of photographs than the Greek ones, considering that the time frame of the research for Greece was twice as long as that of Spain (eight months to four months and 190 photographs to 164) and that part of the data from ABC were not included due to technical difficulties. The proportionally greater number of photographs in the Spanish press can be attributed to the larger scale of the Spanish regularization program, compared to the Greek program. The participation of immigrants in the Spanish program was much broader than in Greece, making the Spanish program particularly successful with regard to its objectives. The most important factor, however, that can account for the increased visuality of immigrants in the Spanish press, is, probably, the controversy it aroused because of its scale but also because it opposed official EU policy, a fact for which Spain was heavily criticized by other European countries. The regularization program in Greece, on the other hand, was not as extensive, did not constitute a topic of public debate, and went rather “unnoticed”. 9

Picturing Immigration

Even though photographs were treated as the basic unit of analysis, the para-text was also taken into account. Para-text includes the captions and titles that cannot escape the viewer’s gaze, the inclusion of photographs in pages dedicated to a specific topic, the existence of other photographs on the same page, and the surrounding visual environment in general. This was deemed necessary, since the para-text is noticed by viewers even if they focus on the photographs (Holsanova, Rahm & Holmqvist, 2006). After all, viewers looking at a photograph already have knowledge of some of the relevant issues and are in a position to recognize the topic to which a photograph refers (for example, the photographs of Pakistani immigrants during the time when the kidnappings dominated the Greek media). The meaning of an image concerns us in relation to its context, which limits its polysemy and has a decisive impact on its signification. The findings in this book are illustrated with representative examples of photographs found in the Greek and Spanish press. However, the choice was limited to those of the photographs that could be reproduced, due to their technical specificities, as not all photographs were available in electronic format.

10

Part I

Chapter 1 Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

1.1 The Visual (Re)turn

H

uman civilization has been visual since its early beginning. Cave paintings and, later, ideograms that visually described meanings, clearly show that images were the first form of communication. It took about 25,000 years for images to transform and become symbols, ensembles of letters. The invention of typography marked the final decline in visual literacy and the predominance of words over images (Elliott & Lester, 2002). In the centuries that followed, the progress of science, the prevalence of logic over superstition, the dominance of humans over nature and the mechanistic mentality that prevailed with the industrial revolution contributed to the further retreat of the Image and the prevalence of the Word. Unlike language, which for long has been considered as a system of “conventional signs”, carrying meaning given to them by socio-cultural convention, images were considered as “natural” signs, carrying universal, standard meanings, independent of cultural or social factors. The relationship between a natural sign and the world of referents is not arbitrary, as it is with conventional signs. An image only shows something which already exists, functioning as a “transparent” surface or as a window, allowing view through it. According to this school of thought, the meaning is not given to the image by external factors, such as society or culture, but exists within the image, which merely reflects reality (see Mitchell, 1994; Bryson, 1983, 1999). Consequently, the capacity of images to convey rich amounts of information was considered limited. It was claimed that the automatism of the camera, the photo apparatus, completely liberated the production of images from the subjectivity of the human agent (Cavell, 1971) and provided guarantees of objectivity. This view is incorporated in the theory regarding the optical and mechanical model (Snyder & Allen, 1982). According to the optical model, the camera and the human eye are similar optical systems that “see” the world in the same way. According to the mechanical model, a photograph shows exactly what was in front of the camera, thus providing a reliable index of what was there, even if it is not depicted as the human eye would see it. Defining the image as a natural sign, in contrast with language, which was viewed as a product of human intellect, was a way to imply its inferiority compared to human intelligence, the inferiority of nature and anything primitive compared to logic and the achievements of the human mind. An image merely shows what is already there, whereas the brain, through language, has the capacity to formulate and describe complex, abstract ideas and to convey rich meanings beyond the material world (Mitchell, 1986). From an early age we learn that 15

Picturing Immigration

reading words is more important than reading images. We are taught text analysis (literature, poetry) but not image analysis (Elliott & Lester, 2002). Yet, everybody seems to agree that our societies are becoming more and more visual. Our postmodern world has debunked the advancements of science, seeing clearly that it can have negative effects on human health and the natural environment, has come to appreciate and acknowledge anew the value as well as the power of nature, has begun to break free from the myth and promises of positivism and to turn toward what had once been rejected as primitive, intuitive, natural – therefore inferior. Within such an environment, the (re)turn to the Image paradoxical as it may sound takes place to a great extent thanks to technology, which eliminates transmission time, even for the most complex and technologically complete visual messages, as well as space boundaries, reaching simultaneously geographically distant receivers. One of the consequences of the digital era is a reduction in communication through words and its replacement with communication through images (Wright, 2002). The speed in the transmission of messages implies more messages in the same time and a plethora of messages requires more time to process. As a result, reading words loses more and more ground in favor of viewing images, since the latter entails less mental effort (Elliott & Lester 2002). Or at least that’s what we have learned to believe. Photographs function on two levels: on a denotative level they depict, without external interference, true events and objects that exist in the physical world, and on a connotative level they visually represent larger and hidden conceptual codes (Barthes, 1977; Sekula, 1984; Zelizer, 1995, 1998). The first level is what gives a photograph the illusion of objectivity. The belief that photographs are faithful copies of reality has played an important role in their use as evidence. “Photographs furnish evidence […] The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture” (Sontag, 1977). A “strong” photograph can disarm critical thought (Wardle, 2007), functioning on the emotional and subconscious realm. Press photographs in particular, have the capacity to pass off as objective and natural depictions of the real world, even though they may be ideologically charged (Hall, 1973). Nowadays, news relies more and more on the use of images. In the past, the use of titles with large, bold letters was dominant in the written press in an effort to attract readers; in recent years this practice has been replaced by the use of impressive – thematically as well as technically – photographs. The aim remains the same: to attract readers’ attention. The conditions however, are much more antagonistic, since the written press is struggling to survive in an environment where not only electronic press is the dominant rival but where news flows freely and the internet continues to gain more and more ground over traditional forms of information and communication. Compared to newspapers, magazines are at an advantage since they use better quality glossy paper and intense colors and since they rely less on text and more on attractive graphic elements, particularly on the cover. These media have played a decisive role in teaching audiences how to “read” images. In the global culture of the 21st century, almost everyone knows and understands the visual language of media. The globality of the (consumer) audience and the immediacy 16

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

in the transmission of messages renders mass visual communication more powerful and complex than ever (Siber, 2005). Compared to text analysis, however, visual analysis has largely been ignored by social scientists, until recently. In an effort to look as scientific as possible, social sciences resorted to the “safety of statistics and numbers” (Scarpelos, in press), as well as to a preference for the study of the Word, as a superior product of human intellect. But despite the predominant logocentrism, the image is recognized as a powerful medium. According to psychologists, we remember about 10% of what we hear, 30% of what we read, but 80% of what we see (Elliott & Lester, 2002). Research results have shown that images stay in the memory much longer than words and are faster and more easily recalled (Wardle, 2007). Other studies have shown that information or news stay in our memory much longer if they are accompanied by images (see Paivio & Csapo, 1973). Images have been found to draw attention to the accompanying text (Garcia & Stark, 1991). Readers “scan” the newspaper, look at the photograph, then the caption, and if they are still interested they continue and read the text (Elliott & Lester 2002). Wanta’s (1988) research revealed that a topic found in a newspaper is perceived as more important by readers if it is accompanied by a photograph. Readers form short- and long-term impressions based on the content of images that accompany articles (see Zillmann, Gibson & Sargent, 1999). The experiment conducted by Gibson & Zillmann (2000) showed that the presence of images depicting sick people belonging to specific ethnic groups created an exaggerated fear caused by the mental association of these groups with health risks, despite the absence of text supporting this view. In other words, images have the power to influence the reception and interpretation of news. In other experiments by Zillmann, Knobloch, and Yu (2001) regarding news magazines, it was shown that readers spend more time reading articles with photographs than the same articles when they appear without photographs and that reading time is longer for articles accompanied by images of destruction or agony. In general, it appears that photographs depicting victims or those that contain the element of danger not only capture attention but also lead to a more careful reading of the accompanying text. It is claimed that precisely such images of destruction caused by the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia on 26 December 2004 acted as the mobilizing force behind the unique wave of humanitarian help from around the world (Kane, 2005). The power of images is also confirmed by the common governmental practice of silencing certain images in order to protect the government’s own interests. For example, the US government, in an attempt to exercise some control over negative treatment of its handling of the war in Iraq, censored photographs of coffins containing dead soldiers coming back from Iraq and delayed the publication of images taken inside the military prison at Abu Ghraib by two weeks (Borah & Bulla, 2006). Photographs have the power to convince and to mobilize because, unlike written text, which is accepted as a mental product of its writer, photographic images are perceived as authentic and objective. A text can create images in a metaphorical sense, in which case the visual is formed by the reader’s imagination, but a photograph provides the image itself, 17

Picturing Immigration

thus prevailing over imagination (Moeller, 1999). When a photograph is not in accordance with the text, the reader reacts by doubting the text, not the picture (Deni & Lester, 2003). This does not mean that photographs are never contested, but when readers think they know the conditions of an event that is described by an image, they become defensive if the photograph contradicts what they believe they know (Deni & Lester, 2003). Photographs mean something because we already have relevant meanings stored in our mind, due to previous experience. In a way, we “recognize” the meaning of an image by resorting to previous knowledge that was obtained due to cultural, individual, and psychological factors. The cultural environment that surrounds us plays a decisive role since dominant cultural beliefs are internalized and then participate in the meaning-making process, causing some meanings to appear as the only way to interpret and perceive an image (Mendelson, 2006). Research results indicate that photographs play a more important role in priming pre-existing interpretive schemata, linking viewer’s memory to familiar news categories, than in visually describing events (see Griffin, 2004).

1.2 Image, Reality, Photojournalism Several scholars have questioned the long-established view that photographs “speak for themselves” and that their meaning is evident, claiming that, in fact, images are richer signs than believed and that they are affected by the human agent as well as the ideology of the society in which they are produced. According to Goodman (1976), an image is a “dense, continuous field” of semantically charged signs, the “reading” of which is in fact “interpretation”, a process that is taught and depends on cultural structures. Eco (1982) states that an iconic sign is as arbitrary as Saussure’s (1959) conventional sign and Mitchell (1986) claims that images must be “read” as arbitrary codes. As has already been mentioned, Barthes (1977) distinguishes two levels of meaning in an image: denotation (what a picture depicts) and connotation (what is signified or implied by the image). He further speaks of “myth”, i.e. the hidden ideology of an image. Burgin (1999) supports that a photograph is a “complex of signs” that are used in order to communicate a message (p. 44) and that it is ideologically charged since it depicts the world in a false way, serving the specific vested interests of the status quo (p. 43). According to Burgin, manipulation is a core component of photography (p. 41). Sekula argues that the meaning of photographic messages is determined by the socioeconomic and cultural context (1981) and that it stems from culture, not nature (1999). For Sekula (1984), photography presents only the possibility of meaning. It contains many different possible meanings that depend on the conditions of production, on the context of viewing, and on the viewer him/herself. Meaning is the result of interaction between a photograph and the viewer; it neither exists within the image alone nor in the viewer’s mind, independent of the image (Mendelson, 2006). Precisely because meaning is created through the interaction between image and viewer, no knowledge of the “language” of visual 18

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

communication is required in order to understand an image (Messaris, 1994). The viewer is a co-producer of meaning. There are other factors that are involved in the production of a photograph and influence its meaning. Snyder (1982) questioned the belief that the photograph is only the product of a mechanical apparatus (camera) and, consequently, free from the subjectivity of the human agent. He claimed that it is also a product of the person who operates the mechanical apparatus and selects “what” the camera will see and “how”. The photographer “characterizes” the object or scene to be photographed by the choice of equipment and the way it will be used, the placement of the camera, the angle, lighting, distance, etc. The selection of object or scene to be photographed is a further “characterization” as something worth to be photographed, as something interesting and important. According to Bourdieu (1999), the selection of photographic depictions is influenced by aesthetic considerations that obey cultural models. The cultural context influences the way in which we perceive ourselves and the world around us. Photographs selected for publication are those that confirm this culturally directed way of viewing (Mendelson, 2006). The meaning of images is not stable but can change depending on the context of presentation (Mendelson, 2006). The context in which a photograph is presented influences its perception and interpretation. Emotional and cognitive reactions to photographs vary depending on whether viewers thought they were news or fiction. Images appearing in the context of a news story are bestowed with credentials of objectivity and truth and are therefore accepted more easily as factual than they would if they appeared in a book, for example. But although photojournalism intends to reveal reality in an objective way, the very concept of “objectivity” is itself a social construction, changing over time (Scarpelos in press) and coinciding with the views and opinions of the majority and of the media and political elites. Media discourse has been characterized as the public discourse of social and political elites, which reproduces, enhances, and legitimizes the status quo and the prevalent ideology (see van Dijk, 1993; Tuchman, 1978; Herman & Chomsky, 1988). Barthes (1977) claimed that the photograph is an object which has been worked on according to professional, aesthetic, and ideological norms that constitute connotation factors. Furthermore, due to the wide use of digital-manipulation techniques, knowledge of the possibility that images can be manipulated and altered, as well as the various available ways to do so, is widely available. There are many known cases of the misuse of photomontage techniques. Characteristic examples include various photographs of Stalin before and after the execution of some of his political comrades, who disappeared from the photographs in which they were depicted together with Stalin as soon as they were executed. In such cases, photographs were manipulated in order to depict the new reality. Another example is that of the photograph of O. J. Simpson that appeared on the cover of Time magazine. In this picture, colors were manipulated in order to darken tones and make Simpson’s skin color look darker than it really was, and thus appear as more threatening to the white majority of readers (Mirzoeff, 2001). 19

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Despite the fact that there are numerous examples of image manipulation and that knowledge about photograph manipulation is widespread (all of which cast doubt on the validity of photographic images as accurate records), photographs continue to convince and to be used as evidence. One should not forget that photographs played a decisive role in the decision of the US government to invade Iraq in 2003 since they provided “proof ” for the claims regarding the existence of weapons of mass destruction, thus legitimizing and providing an excuse for the invasion and the beginning of a destructive war. Press photographs are composed, cropped, “cooked”, and displayed in such a way so as to present a subjective message with a veneer of objectivity and “realism” in a vivid, memorable, and “easy to read” format (Duncan, 1990). Photographs constitute socially constructed products because they are created within an institutional framework that determines how journalists and their products function within it (Schwartz, 1992). Herman and Chomsky (1988) argue that a set of institutional “filters” determines what is newsworthy, what is fit to print, what will be marginalized and define the boundaries of public discourse and interpretation in a way that promotes the interests of the dominant elites. But these “filters” function so naturally that journalists are often convinced that they select and present news with objectivity and professionalism, even when what they do is adopt and reflect the dominant ideology. The process of selecting and filtering photographs contributes to the creation of ideologically charged products. Images are particularly effective tools in transmitting ideologically charged messages, in a subtle, implicit, and camouflaged way, as they appear to depict reality (Messaris & Abraham, 2001). Research results support these views. For example, in a study of photographs from the first Gulf War in 1991 (Griffin & Lee, 1995), and from the US invasions in Iraq in 2003 and in Afghanistan in 2001 (Griffin, 2004), it was found that press photographs supported official US politics and the official US version of the facts, presenting the US president as a strong, decisive leader and the American army as capable of crushing the enemy while at the same time reducing (by silencing visually) the cost in human lives as well as the economic cost. Through the use of conventional motifs, photographs end up reinforcing pre-existing perceptions and stereotypes, staying closely connected to power, rather than offering a new point of view or revealing new information. Therefore, as Winston (2001) claims, since a photograph is vulnerable to the creator’s subjectivity as well as to the possibility of manipulation, it should be viewed at best as a partial proof only and be interpreted in a similar way as a painting or a text, which are perceived as products of human subjectivity. One should not, however, overlook the fact that the use of conventional motifs is often the result of organizational limitations that exist in the production and circulation of news photographs. According to Rosenblum (1978), convention is a function of social organization that interferes in the production process and affects the final result. This is why one needs to first understand the social conditions as well as the institutional context in which photographs are produced, in order to understand their content. She argues that different contexts of production result in different photographic styles. For example, the limited news 20

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

categories that circulate and need to be accompanied by photographs, combined with the mechanized, standardized, and limiting ways of exposing and processing a photograph in newspapers contribute to the homogenization and standardization of press photographs. As Hagaman (1993) mentions, news photographs are produced in an organization that includes editors, photographers, readers, and viewers. Editors assign photographers a number of topics to cover in a limited amount of time. This results in superficial coverage since there is no time to properly investigate the assigned topic. The photograph is not used as a tool for investigating the topic; it merely provides a summary. Photographs end up being conventional and stereotypical as they use only a limited “vocabulary” to narrate a limited number of stories and themes. Photographs are selected for publication if they are easily and quickly understood and if they, by attracting the viewers’ attention, encourage them to read the accompanying story. The usually superficial visual coverage of news stories is due to the limits of news-gathering organizations and occurs irrespective of the quality of a photojournalist’s education or their ideological background (Becker, 1998). The studies mentioned above (Griffin & Lee, 1995; Griffin, 2004) show that the photographic coverage of the first Gulf War in 1991 and of the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and of Iraq in 2003 by three of the most important US news magazines (Time, Newsweek, and US News & World Report) presented a very narrow repertoire of coverage and almost identical motifs. Besides including only limited thematic categories, they repeated certain images with intense symbolic content and insisted on key-photographs that provided a visual summary of the presented news. Elli Lester Roushanzamir (2004) claims that news – and consequently photojournalism too – has adopted the advertising practices of repetition and simple graphic depiction in order to promote a preferred interpretation. Referring to the US audience, she explains that the media homogenize the diversity of interpretations in order to be understood by a particularly heterogeneous audience. But this also applies to audiences outside the United States that are less heterogeneous. As Elliott & Lester (2002) remark, photojournalistic images contain elements of persuasion and entertainment, much like advertising images. Scarpelos (in press: 74–75) notes that “photojournalism re-negotiates and re-constructs the very meaning of an event in a way that allows it to gradually form a specific visual rhetoric based on commonplace”. The visual rhetoric of documentary photography is characterized by standardization and aesthetization. By coming under the “gallery–museum–art market” circuit and through its participation in exhibitions, photojournalism becomes an artistic/ consumer commodity while at the same time downgrading the social, economic, and political context of its subject or theme. The exhibitions and annual competition of the World Press Photo organization constitute a typical example. Zarzycka’ s (2007) research reveals that the criteria for selecting the photographs to participate in these events have little to do with the “promotion of high photojournalistic standards and the free exchange of information,” i.e. the principles of the non-profit World Press Photo Foundation. Instead, the photographs that are selected are those featuring images of pain, destruction, and tears 21

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through a completely Western, neo-imperialist gaze. The picture becomes an aesthetic object depicting the suffering of distant, geographically and socially, peoples (Scarpelos, in press). But does this persistent use of standardized and conventional images have the intended effect? Mendelson (2001) conducted two experiments in order to examine viewers’ responses to images that do not conform to the rules of conventionality and standardization. He studied the results of visual innovation in terms of preference to view, viewing time, recollection, and interest showed by viewers in a photograph when it was presented alone and when presented in a newspaper. These experiments showed that viewers reacted positively to originality when a photograph was viewed separately but in a context of a newspaper they tended to prefer commonplace, conventional photographs. Such experiments confirm the frequently supported view that newspaper readers are not willing to spend time deciphering complex photographs and that photojournalistic images draw their meaning from the stereotypes that newspaper readers and editors have already accepted, connecting viewers’ memory with familiar news motifs and pre-existing interpretive schemata (Becker, 1998; Griffin, 2004).

1.3 Media Stereotypes of the “Other” The concept of stereotype was coined by Walter Lippmann in 1962, who spoke of “pictures in our heads”. Stereotypes are cognitive structures that shape our perspectives and attitudes regarding a social group and they constitute an oversimplified way to represent this group. Stereotypical representation is limited mostly to one and only one category (Fahmy, 2004). By generalizing and applying one characteristic to everyone belonging to the same social group, a stereotype is a quick way to describe people in collective, rather than individual, terms (Lester, 1997). Even though stereotypes are created on the basis of reality, they present only one limited aspect of it, usually negative and often distorted. In addition, stereotypes often overlap. For example, immigrants that also happen to belong to a different, foreign ethnic group are burdened not only with social but also with racial or ethnic stereotypes. They are all “uneducated”, “dirty”, “unorganized”, “thieves”, etc. (Downing & Husband, 2005). The media depict people belonging to different social groups than “us”, the majority, in specific and limited categories like, for example, crime or sports. But as Lester (1997) observes, the media stereotype because we stereotype and categorize what we see around us. Media stereotypes reflect the dominant perceptions regarding “us” and “others”, regarding what is considered “acceptable” and what “unacceptable”. They reflect the ideology of the majority population regarding other social groups. And ideologies are not an individual issue; they constitute cognitive reflections of the social, political, economic and cultural “positions” of a whole society (van Dijk, 1987). As a means of expression of the dominant ideology, news adopts stereotypes that in turn guide judgment, evaluation, and interpretation of events in ways that further cultivate 22

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

dominant views (Gorham, 2006). Stereotypes are stored as cognitive schemata that reflect the dominant ideology within the social context, as well as the “otherness” that we attribute to certain social groups and that constitutes the basis for social discrimination. It is interesting that stereotypes of the dominant ideology function as cognitive schemata even for those who are described negatively by them as the stigmatized internalizes the stigma and confirms the stereotype with his/her behavior and actions (Karydis, 2001). Even though they are oversimplified ways to describe a social group, stereotypes communicate their messages effectively – perhaps precisely – because they formulate them in a simplistic, monolithic manner lacking complexity. Visual stereotypes are effective for one more reason: they affect viewers emotionally much more than words (Lester, 1997). Lippmann claimed that “imagination is formed by the images we have seen” (1962). Photographs not only reflect the way in which we categorize others, they also legitimize this categorization, making it seem as undisputable truth and functioning as “evidence”. In the various forms of visual communication (photography, video, cartoons, etc.), stereotypes constitute useful tools in the transmission of messages in an easy, clear, and readily comprehensible manner. But when they are used in order to accurately convey information and facts they can prove dangerous and harmful. The mission of journalism is to present information about people and events that is accurate, objective, and complete. In reality, however, it is much easier and simpler for a photojournalist to depict an angry black citizen, for example, than to explore with his/her camera the social problems that cause angry reactions (Lester & Miller, 1996). According to social identity theory, the in-group is compared to the out-group in a way that makes “us”, the in-group, seem better. Those who do not belong to “us” are perceived as more or less homogeneous, sharing the same characteristics. Negative behavior is attributed to endemic traits, representative of this person’s social group. However, for someone belonging to “us”, the reasons for negative behavior will be attributed to external factors (Gorham, 2006). According to visual-communication scholars, there is a tendency to represent the “other” by means of photographic codes, not only as worse or not as good but also as different, strange, primitive, not human, immoral, etc. (Fishman & Marvin, 2003). The construction of otherness is achieved through the subtle manipulation of signs and images in a way that it is not easily perceptible (Hallam & Street, 2000). Fishman & Marvin (2003) identified the differences between the representation of violence by Americans and non-Americans by collecting and analyzing photographs from the front page of the New York Times from 1976 to 1996. They found a tendency to refrain from presenting Americans in images of explicit and immediate violence, except for cases where they re-establish order. Thus, US violence is connected to security and restoration or correction of a negative situation. On the contrary, individuals and representatives from different countries are presented with greater frequency in images of explicit violence, disrupting order in a brutal, violent way. Otherness can be defined on the basis of race. Various studies of the media in the United States have shown that they either do not depict African Americans at all or they do so in 23

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a stereotypical way (Bogle, 1997; Entman & Rojecki, 2000). Lester & Miller (1996) studied the photographic coverage of African Americans in four US newspapers and found that even though their depiction in limited thematic categories such as “sports”, “entertainment”, and “crime” had decreased compared to a previous study, stereotypical coverage of African Americans was still the norm. In a similar study of a television news story about AIDS, Bird (1996) found that while stereotypical discourse was absent from verbal descriptions, the accompanying images presented African Americans in a way that connected them to the story about AIDS and to risky sexual behavior, and disconnected them from the normality of life, from the life of the majority of the audience. Wright (2002) claims that refugee photographs make use of stereotypical portrayals, confirming the refugee as the “other”, as a human being that does not belong to “us”. Commenting on Dorothea Lange’s famous photograph “Migrant Mother”, he considers it obvious that the photographer was looking for something that would confirm and correspond to an image Lange already had in her mind.1 But even if the photographer creates less stereotypical images, the ones selected for publication will most probably be precisely those more predictable ones that correspond to the stereotypical image of the refugee. Preexisting beliefs regarding an issue are individual as well as cultural, and circulate within a society as stereotypes. In the end, various cultural elements are internalized subconsciously and become part of a person’s way of seeing (Berger, 1972). Malkki (1995) observes that in photographic representations “the refugee” is universalized as a special “kind” of person, as a special human type with similar, generic characteristics. This practice of portrayal as a special “type” is not new. In his articles ‘Classifying subjects’ (1984) and ‘A Map of Depravity’ (1985), Green shows how depictions of the poor and of members of non-Western cultures were influenced by the ideology of the society in which they were produced and confirmed the already existing assumptions about them. These assumptions stemmed from the ideas of Social Darwinism and Eugenics, predominant in 19th-century England, according to which poverty was perceived as the result of weakness of character (1985, p. 38) and as an endemic feature, and, consequently, the poor were represented as distinctive social and psychological types. Members of non-Western cultures were depicted as the peculiar and alien, as the “other”, as objects to be studied and measured. This is explained by the fact that these photographs were taken by scientists and personnel attached to the government or the military whose work was to collect anthropometric data (1984, p. 34), but who, just like the institutions they served, accepted the idea of the inferiority of the “other”.

1.4 Framing Theory Framing theory has in recent years become the main tool for the description, understanding, and evaluation of media content. According to the research of Bryant and Miron, who studied articles published in six leading scientific journals2 in the field of communication 24

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

from 2001 to 2004, framing theory is currently the most frequently used theory, and will most probably keep this position in the years to come (Bryant & Miron, 2004). After all, to a great extent it is a theory still in the making. This research reveals that around 18% of articles published in this area address theory “building”. Media theorists and researchers agree that it is difficult to define framing theory and to set its boundaries. One could argue that framing theory constitutes, in a way, an evolution of agenda-setting theory. According to agenda setting, the media determine public issues, that is, which topics will be presented to the public and which not, thus influencing audience perception of which topics are important and which are not. Framing theory deals with the way in which these issues are presented. In other words, the difference between agenda setting and framing is the difference between whether or not we think about an issue and how we think about it (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007). In general, however, it is described as a way to promote a certain “reading” of the message presented in the media. Facts obtain meaning when they are incorporated in a frame that gives them coherence, highlighting some elements and obscuring others (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). The framing of an event establishes its meaning. Every frame is an indirect “instruction”, suggestion, or stimulus so that the recipient will understand the message according to the idea expressed in the frame (Van Gorp, 2005). In simple words, frames are something like “recipes” from “specialists” on how to “cook” our opinions (Kinder & Sanders, 1996). As a research methodology, frame analysis studies the selection of certain aspects of an issue (stereotypes, images, metaphors, etc.) that can lead to different reactions (Bryant & Miron, 2004). It is accepted that there is no one and only one correct way to apply framing theory in research. Since there exist various definitions and theoretical approaches, various research trends are also under formation (Van Gorp, 2005; D’Angelo, 2002). One of the first references to framing theory is attributed to Goffman (1974), who defined frames as constructs that guide the perception and representation of reality. In his study of magazine advertisements, Goffman (1976) noted the existence of certain thematic frames functioning as the basis for stereotypical depiction of gender. The common denominator in these advertisements was female subordination and the implied immaturity and “childishness” of women. Later, Gitlin (1980) defined frames as techniques used by journalists in order to effectively package for their audience the huge amounts of information they deal with every day. For Gitlin frames are tactics of “cognition, interpretation and presentation, of selection, emphasis and exclusion” (p. 7). This organizational practice can have a considerable impact on the way meaning is constructed; the use of frames “makes the world beyond direct experience look natural” (p. 6), therefore unquestionable. According to Entman (1993), framing is the practice of selecting certain aspects of reality and making them more salient in order to promote a certain interpretation or moral evaluation. Salience makes a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable. The use of frames “directs attention to certain aspects of reality while obscuring others, and this can influence reactions.” Entman (1991) studied the different coverage of 25

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two similar events by US media: the shooting down of a Korean passenger aircraft by a Soviet fighter aircraft and the shooting down of an Iranian passenger aircraft by a US Navy ship. In both cases, all passengers were killed. However, although the first event was framed as a morally unacceptable act, the latter was framed as a technical problem. Gamson & Modigliani (1987) claim that frames constitute a significant part of the process through which people give meaning to what they see or hear. They provide a central line that mentally connects a series of events. According to McCombs (1997), “framing is the selection of a restricted number of thematically related attributes for inclusion in the media agenda when a particular object is discussed.” As a result, the final picture that appears in the media is only a small fraction of reality (see Fahmy, 2004) and not a depiction of “the world out there”. A typical example is the news references to the African continent which almost exclusively concerns wars, dictatorships, famine, or disease, particularly AIDS. The result is to include in this “disaster” frame all citizens of African descent and all individual news stories about them (Fair, 1993). Gilens’ (1996) research on US TV networks and magazines showed that in poverty-related topics, African Americans appeared with a frequency as high as 60% when the true percentage of poor African Americans was 29% of the total US population, much lower than what was presented in the media. In similar research, Heider (2000) found that local TV stations used two main frames when reporting ethnicity issues: (a) a crimestory frame and (b) an ethnic-cultural-festival frame. The effect of using these frames was to silence every other aspect of life in these ethnic communities, limiting it to one single negative or positive dimension. Similarly, the insistence on using the term “immigrants” when referring to British citizens of African or Asian descent (even those belonging to the third or fourth generation) by the British media or to US citizens of Mexican descent (the largest Latin group in the United States) by the US media frames these people as “not belonging”, as not being a part of the society in which they live (Downing & Husband, 2005). The long-term effect on the way the audience defines social reality becomes particularly relevant when it concerns members of the dominant majority with nonexistent or superficial relations, often only in the workplace, with people of ethnic or racial minorities. To a great extent, the “image” that the members of the dominant majority have of these minorities is formed by media frames (Downing & Husband, 2005). According to Goffman, frames constitute a central part of a culture and are institutionalized in various ways (1981). Precisely because frames are so deeply embedded in the culture in which they are created, they appear so “natural” and undisputable that the process of social construction remains invisible and unnoticed (Gamson, et al., 1992). It is often difficult even for researchers to identify frames since they are so deeply rooted in the spirit of their time and the cultural and social context in which they appear (Entman, 1991; Gamson, 1995). The existence of a common repertoire of frames in society is the connecting link between the production and the consumption of news (Van Gorp, 2007). However, although journalists formulate the content of news using familiar frames of reference, this doesn’t 26

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

necessarily mean that audience members adopt these frames in a way that makes them view the world as seen and presented by journalists. Such a claim would underestimate audience participation in the meaning-making process and coincides with older perceptions regarding the role of the audience as an amorphous and easily manipulated mass. More recent theories and results of experiments describe the media audience as a collection of individuals with an active role in interpreting, processing, and accepting or rejecting media messages. After all, the media themselves have largely lost the role of “authority” they once had. This change is particularly felt in Europe. The advent of private media (particularly TV) undermined the one-sidedness of news presentation, and, more recently, the internet revolution has altered completely the way media professionals and users operate. Information now comes from different sources and different geographical, political, and cultural locations, which means that more critical judgment is required on the part of media consumers to filter, cross-check, and process it. It is understood now that media users do not unquestionably adopt frames and interpret them as intended, but that meaning is created by the interaction between the reader/viewer and the message. Framing theory recognizes the significance of interaction between the message and the pre-existing hermeneutical schemata in the mind of audience members, confirming the active role of the audience in understanding, interpreting, and applying the received information in order to form opinions (Hwang, et al., 2007). It is accepted, however, that what frames do is interfere by providing a guiding line and indirectly defining the way a message is to be interpreted. Frames neither exist nor operate outside their recipients. They function by activating preexisting schemata in the minds of audience members. They constitute modes of presenting information so that it will logically connect to already existing cognitive structures in the memory of audience members (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). In order to process every new piece of information, individuals apply hermeneutical schemata to categorize and interpret it so that meaning is created (Goffman, 1974). When a frame corresponds to or matches a pre-existing “schema” and information already stored, there is a greater possibility of it being activated and becoming accessible for future judgments (Higgins, 1996). Furthermore, a frame prevents recipients from using schemata that contradict it when processing and interpreting a message (Van Gorp, 2007). The stronger the idea on which a frame is based, or the deeper the idea’s roots, the greater the probability that it will activate the relevant schema in the minds of audience members. Schemata that are confirmed by further information or by similar frames establish themselves, and it becomes more difficult for contradicting frames to refute them (Van Gorp, 2007). The results of a frame depend on various factors such as the recipient’s attention, interests, values, beliefs, or desires. Some framing mechanisms are so powerful that a simple reference to them suffices to activate the relevant schema (Van Gorp, 2007). It is claimed that a frame prevails when it is “loud”, that is, when it is frequently repeated (Chong & Druckman, 2007). Research results support the view that the effect of a frame depends on how “strong” it is. A frame is considered “strong” when it comes from a credible source, when it coincides 27

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with the general consensus, and when it does not contradict established, pre-existing beliefs (Chong & Druckman, 2007). Frames are constructed to a great extent with audience preferences in mind (for example, anticipated reaction, convictions, etc.) (Kinder, 2007) so as not to contradict them. The meaning-making process that involves the interaction between media frames and media users is not a purely internal process that depends entirely on individual characteristics. As already mentioned, it is guided by cultural elements, such as beliefs, historical memory or historical myths, stereotypes, customs and habits, values, and norms that are inherent in the consciousness or memory of a society and of its members. So, by indirectly implying a cultural schema, frames can define the meaning attributed to an issue (Van Gorp, 2007). Schemata are “dynamic” because they develop gradually and are related to personal experiences and feelings. Frames are “stable” because they constitute part of the culture in which they are formed and change very little or very slowly over time. What does change is their selection. A frame can be rejected, doubted, or replaced by another, but remains itself unaltered (Van Gorp, 2007, 2005). Selection is guided by ideological and cultural considerations that reflect the dominant ideology, as was explained earlier. Furthermore, the conditions and routines of the journalistic profession lead to a more frequent selection of some frames compared to others that are selected only seldom. Such a condition is, for example, the existence of “sponsors” for various frames, like specific interest groups, advertisers, politicians, spin doctors, etc., that guide selection and formation of frames by journalists, so that they reflect their own views and interests (Van Gorp, 2007; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). In addition, the media draw their information from the same sources, something that results in exactly the same frames appearing in different media. Van Gorp (2007) calls the first case “framing through the media” and the second “framing by the media”.

1.5 Visual Framing As already mentioned, frames are so deeply rooted in the culture in which they are created that they largely go “unnoticed”. Framing through the use of visual means is particularly difficult to realize due to the special properties of images as communication media. Messaris & Abraham (2001) distinguish three main attributes that make images appear much closer to reality than words and cause viewers to be largely unaware of visual framing, taking what they see for granted: 1. Analogical quality – the relationship between the image and the depicted object is based on similarity or analogy. The similarity of an object with its image covers the difference between image and reality and as a result it “deceives” the viewer who is not aware that the image is a construction, aiming at communicating a message.

28

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

2. Indexicality – a term introduced by Peirce (1932) that he used to distinguish photographs from other images. The capacity of the photograph to faithfully depict an object gives it the quality of an “index” and this indexicality functions as an indirect guarantee that the photograph is closer to reality than any other kind of image. This is an additional reason why the viewer does not question what he/she sees. 3. Lack of an explicit propositional syntax – visual language does not have an explicit set of syntactic devices or conventions for making propositions. Viewers do not usually realize that a photograph is an articulated piece of information, just like a text, and are unaware of the visual structures that lead them to specific interpretations. Images constitute framing devices, but they too employ their own techniques to visually frame an issue. One such visual-framing technique is the “simple action of selection” (Scheufele, 1999). The process of selection constitutes an inevitable part of creating a photograph and presenting it to the public. Selection refers to the stage of creation, with the choice of theme, composition, framing, etc., as well as the choice to publish or reject a photograph, but it also refers to the stage of image processing. The current technology of image processing allows for cropping, deleting undesirable elements, zooming in on faces, etc. It allows for actions that influence the “reading” of a photograph. Furthermore, the choice of what to photograph affects the meaning of the image since it renders it important enough to be photographed. Selection of one theme over another influences the way viewers perceive events (Mendelson, 2006). What the media obscure visually does not constitute part of the public sphere, it is classified as a “non-issue” and it is perceived as such by the majority of viewers. Scholars note the importance of taking into account content that is excluded from the visual domain. As Downing & Husband (2005) observe, the value of “framing” is that it highlights how what is not said, what is outside of the frame, can have the same or greater significance in representing race or ethnicity than what is actually being said. For example, in cinema, TV, press photographs, or advertisements, simply the absence or presence of non-whites is itself an issue, before we even examine the roles in which they appear, when they do. Furthermore, selectively photographing different elements of an event results in completely varied depictions. One can have similar effects with moving image and selective video shooting. A representative example is the image of the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s statue after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. According to the official, American TV version, it was a festive event, with the broad and enthusiastic participation of the Iraqi people. According to eye-witnesses however, very few people actually gathered on the scene and they were not as enthusiastic as was shown in the official, TV version of the event. Composition can be arranged in many different ways and includes elements that can be used in various ways in framing, thus creating different impressions and, consequently, leading to different readings. Camera angle is a significant framing technique since it places the viewer in relation to the depicted object. Shooting from above, for example, makes an object look small and unimportant and places the viewer in a position of power as his/ 29

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her gaze is directed downward. Shooting from a point lower than eye level has exactly the opposite effect since it is the object that is then placed in a position of power. Shooting at eye level creates a symbolic relationship of equality between viewer and depicted object. Additionally, when the object is photographed from a frontal angle and placed before the viewer, a relationship of immediacy is created; otherwise the viewer feels him/herself more detached from the object (Mendelson, 2006; Jewitt & Oyama, 2001). Another important framing technique is camera distance. Camera distance or zooming create a social relation of various degrees between viewer and object. In the physical world, Hall (1966) distinguishes four distance zones: t

*OUJNBUF
– allows for physical contact and is the distance of love making, comforting, protecting but also wrestling and inflicting physical pain, t

1FSTPOBM
EJTUBODF
o thought of as a protective bubble around an organism, but at the same time implying familiarity between people who know each other t

4PDJBM
EJTUBODF
o a safety distance common in social or professional contacts t

1VCMJD
EJTUBODF
o which is outside the circle of involvement and implies an impersonal relation. These distances are also used in images. Proximity to the photographed object or person, i.e. shooting from a close distance or zooming in, is considered the distance of personal relation or intimacy. Close-ups communicate the individuality of the depicted person and make it seem like someone from our in-group, one of “us”. On the contrary, shooting from a distance makes the depicted person look distant or alien and creates an impersonal relation with the viewer, highlighting the person’s “otherness”. Referring to television codes, Fiske (1987) supports that the most common camera distance is the medium one and the closeup, which create a comfortable and close relationship with the viewer, while he considers extreme close-ups as the codified way to represent the villain. Besides long camera distance, another way to overshadow individuality and represent people as belonging to social types is to show them in groups. Photographs depicting more than one person with similar characteristics give the impression that they belong to the same “species”, that they are all the same. As a result, viewers tend to universalize the characteristics of the depicted individuals to all persons belonging to the same social group (van Leeuwen, 2001), a group that is separate and different from the majority, from “us”, a group to which the “others” of a given society belong. Images can create an imaginary contact with the viewer when the depicted person looks toward him/her and when expressing feelings” (Fahmy, 2004). Expression of feelings makes the depicted person look more human, thus bringing it closer to the viewer who may identify with him/her emotionally and spiritually. On the contrary, lack of expression “dehumanizes” the depicted person, making them appear as the “other”. But framing choices take place even after the creation stage. Photojournalists must choose which images they are going to give emphasis to and which ones they will reject. Most 30

Theoretical Considerations: Media Images and Framing

journalists prefer impressive, graphic images as more suitable for the visual description of news, while their choice is also influenced by context (Fahmy, 2005). Scheufele (1999) distinguishes five factors which influence the way journalists frame an issue: social norms and values, organizational pressures and constraints, pressure from various interest groups, routines of the journalistic profession, and journalists’ ideological and political orientations. As mentioned above, what is selected in the end becomes part of the public sphere and what is rejected is a non-issue. It is accepted that the image is a polysemic medium, that it does not contain one and only one message. This polysemy, however, is limited by pre-existing schemata, such as social norms, historical memory or myths, and social conventions. As already explained, framing theory accepts that meaning stems from the interaction between the message and the receiver through the activation of pre-existing cognitive schemata. This interactive relationship determines the meaning of images as well. Mendelson (2006) analyzes the individual and cultural factors influencing the meaning of images. Individual factors such as race, social class, gender, as well as personal experiences and education, have an effect on our perception of the world around us and on how we process visual and other stimuli. He mentions that in the research of MacKay and Covell, who studied stereotypical representation of women in advertising, male respondents did not rate stereotypical portrayals of women as negatively as women did. This makes sense, as men were not the ones affected or offended by these portrayals (MacKay & Covell, 1997). Individual elements intertwine with cultural ones in the process of making sense of an image. Mendelson (2006) notes that an image has a different meaning in different time periods and for different people who are part of different cultures or cultural groups. Cultural context influences the connotative meaning of an image, as it embeds dominant myths and ideologies affecting creation as well as interpretation of an image, so that it appears as if it can be interpreted and understood in only one way. An image “signifies” because viewers have already stored meanings related to it through previous experience (Barthes, 1977; Berger, 1972). In other words, visual stimuli activate pre-existing schemata in viewers’ minds. In his study of gender in advertisements, Goffman (1976) maintained that stereotypical representation of gender did not reflect the real behavior of men and women in the real world, but rather the perception of the majority, regarding male and female behavior. As Messaris (1994) mentions, images reproduce a lot of the informational patterns that we use in our everyday lives. This is how we extract meaning from images and not because of knowledge of visual conventions. On the other hand, images that predominate within a society, through their frequent and wide circulation, create a common visual language that constitutes a common point of reference for the members of this society (Mendelson, 2006). Framing theory is a useful tool utilized frequently in research studying the stereotypical representation of gender, social class, race, etc., in the media. The visual framing of an issue by the media is particularly important when this issue can have significant consequences for society. The visual framing of immigrants, which is the topic of this book, is particularly significant for the formation of the social relationship between them and the members of 31

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the dominant majority, since media frames have the power to “characterize” and signify various social groups in ways that determine how they are viewed by the dominant majority and thus influencing their position in society.

Notes 1. It should be noted, however, that Lange was on a mission, during which she repeatedly heard the same story and faced the same situation. Thus, the specific of every story was replaced by a general common narrative and was visualised in an image that incorporated all previous images (Scarpelos, in press: 60). 2. These journals are: Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Communication Research, Mass Communication and Society, and Media Psychology. Framing theory was used with the greatest frequency primarily in the first three.

32

Chapter 2 Greece and Spain: Background Information

2.1 Overview of Migration History in Greece and Spain

T

he largest part of the migration history in Greece and Spain is dominated by flows with a direction from these two countries to countries of North America and Northern Europe. Large numbers of immigrants from Greece also went to Australia and from Spain to Latin America and North Africa. In the beginning of the 20th century a large number of refugees arrived in Greece, and there was also an important period of internal migration in both countries during the 1950s through the 1970s. Later, there appeared a migratory flow from former socialist countries and countries of the developing world to Greece and Spain, something which continues to this day. Since colonial times, Spain was a country of origin for migrants. It is estimated that in the 16th century 80% of Spanish migrants settled in Latin America. Following their independence, Latin American countries imposed restrictions on the entry of migrants from Spain, while the Spanish state forbade emigration to Latin America, with its promise of a better future for immigrants, in an attempt to reduce the decline of the rural population, which was a source of cheap labor for the country. Consequently, the “gancho” appeared, a person who went around the country providing information about destination countries as well as about the conditions of the illegal journey. The gancho offered mediator services, as they do today the channels of illegal migration trafficking (Colectivo Ιοé, 1999). Gradually, the Spanish state went from banning emigration from Spain to encouraging it. In the 1950s, 520,000 Spaniards emigrated to the United States, and during the following decade, 650,000 emigrated under official control to the countries of Northern Europe. The majority headed to France, Sweden, Germany, and the Benelux countries, following agreements between these countries and Spain. Such agreements were entered into by other Southern European countries as well and aimed at addressing the demand for cheap labor that was caused by the economic recovery of Northern European countries after the Second World War (Garcίa España, 2001). It is worth noting that there was also a migratory flow of Spaniards to the Northern African countries, mainly Morocco and Algeria, where they worked as paid farmers. Greeks started migrating to the United States in large numbers at the end of the 19th century, while in the first decades of the 20th century Greece received large numbers of refugees. Between 1900 and 1924, 420,000 Greeks emigrated to the USA. During the Balkan Wars (1912–13), one million people found refuge in Greece and 25,000 arrived from Eastern Rumelia (Bulgaria) in 1919. Furthermore, 1.4 million Greeks moved to Greece from Asia 35

Picturing Immigration

Minor, Pontus, and Cappadocia after the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922. In the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, 350,000 Greeks from Istanbul and 200,000 people from the Greek communities in Turkey, Egypt, Zaire, and Lebanon arrived in Greece, followed by 150,000 Greek-Cypriot refugees after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 (Georgoulas, 2001). These new arrivals were either Greeks or of Greek origin, and even though they were not especially welcomed by the local populations, they were officially considered to be part of the Greek nation and so Greece was not considered at the time to be a country receiving immigrants. On the contrary, it was classified as a traditional sender of immigrants, mainly due to the migratory flow to the United States, which continued together with the flow toward the Northern European countries. It is estimated that from the 1950s up until the 1970s about one-sixth of the Greek population was engaged in the development of Northern European industries (Amitsis & Lazaridis, 2001b), following official agreements, as in the case of Spain. The period between 1950 and 1970 was also a period of intense internal migration in both countries. The changes in the economic policy and the transition from agricultural to industrial economies resulted in intense mobility among the rural populations, who started migrating to the cities (Colectivo Ioé, 1995). From the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, economic crunch in north-western Europe, on the one hand, and economic development in the Southern European countries after they joined the EU (then the EEC), on the other, created two migratory flows toward the latter: a repatriation flow and a flow from countries of the developing world. It is estimated that, by 1985, 617,000 Greek immigrants had returned home (Georgoulas, 2001). In Spain, after 1973, more than a million Spanish immigrants to Northern Europe started returning home (Izquierdo Escribano, 1996). With the collapse of the communist regimes and the opening of borders of Eastern European countries, the migration flow to EU countries increases. More than 70,000 Pontian Greeks, a group of ethnic Greeks who inhabited the area around the Black Sea, arrived in Greece from the former USSR and about 200,000 Greeks came from Albania. Albanian immigrants were estimated to number half a million, quite a large number considering the total number of immigrants who lived in Greece until then (Georgoulas, 2001). In the beginning of the 1990s, Greece and Spain were considered mostly as intermediate stops for immigrants coming from third countries to Northern Europe. Until 1985, the majority of foreigners with whom Spaniards and Greeks came into contact were either welloff tourists or pensioners who chose these countries (particularly Spain) for permanent or seasonal residence. Since the 1990s, a quantitative as well as qualitative change was noted: the influx of foreigners rose significantly and now it was mainly economic migrants from poorer countries (Cornelius, 1994). Internal migration from rural to urban areas combined with the changes in the economy created a demand in peripheral areas, such as domestic and rural labor. This tendency, which started in the 1970s, intensified during the 1980s, resulting in an increase in the number of migrant workers. In addition, the broadness of the service sector on which the local economies are based together with the existence of an informal 36

Greece and Spain: Background Information

economy created a migratory flow that covered the demand for seasonal and flexible work (Iosifides & King, 1998). Although Spain and Greece are now considered receiver countries of immigrants, it is worth noting that they continue to be senders as well. Nowadays, migrants from Spain and Greece are educated, qualified, young people who cannot find appropriate work at home.

2.2 Immigrants in Greece and Spain during the Period of Study (2005) According to the last census (2001), the number of foreigners residing in Greece had risen to 800,000, five times more than the number recorded in 1991 (167,000). According to the estimates of Eurostat, the EU’s statistical information service, the total number of EU citizens residing in Greece at the end of the 1990s was around 50,000, which means that the majority of foreigners who were recorded in the last census came from countries outside the EU (see Bagavos & Papadopoulou, 2003). According to Spain’s National Institute of Statistics, in 2005 there were 3.5 million foreign inhabitants in the country (Instituto Nacional de Estadística), accounting for 8.4% of the total population. Of these, 32% were European pensioners, gathered mainly in the tourist areas by the sea, but the majority comprises workers from third countries, gathered mainly in the metropolitan and urban centers, but also found in tourist and rural areas (Pumares Fernández, 2003). The majority of non-EU foreigners come from Morocco (21.1%), followed by those coming from Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Senegal. According to 2001 data, there has been a rise in the number of immigrants from other countries as well, such as Ecuador, Romania, Bulgaria, Colombia, Cuba, and Pakistan. Contrary to the type of foreigner who originates from Northern Europe, these foreigners belong to the most active age groups with a minimum presence of old people or minors. In Greece, the majority of immigrants come from neighboring countries. The vast majority (57.5%) comes from Albania, followed by immigrants from Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Pakistan, etc. In 2000, there were 152,204 immigrants of Greek origin from the former Soviet republics (mainly Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Armenia). Besides immigrants from the developing world, there are also citizens of developed countries with the most populous group being US citizens (18,000), followed by British and Germans. Some of the US and German citizens are of Greek origin. It is estimated that 100,000 Greek-Albanians have been naturalized and therefore do not appear in the data of the 2001 census. Lastly, there is a number of immigrants from Cyprus (17,000) (Triantafyllidou, 2005). According to estimates, the real number of foreigners residing in Greece is higher and amounts to about one million, corresponding to 9% of the total population and 12% of the workforce. The number of residence permits given in 2003–4 was about 700,000, which

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is higher than the official number of immigrants appearing in the 2001 census (BaldwinEdwards & Kyriakou, 2004). The majority of immigrants state that they came to Greece for reasons of work (54%) followed by reasons of family reunification and repatriation. Most immigrants belong to the work activeage group of 15–64 years of age. They are employed in construction (25%), housework (20%), the agricultural sector (17.5%), and in tourism and trade (15%) (Triantafyllidou, 2005). Most of the immigrants from third countries are found primarily on the islands, in the capital, and in the northwestern part of the country. There is only a very small concentration of immigrants in Northern Greece, even in areas with a lot of immigrants. In Thessaloniki, the second largest city, the percentage of foreigners is merely 7% while in the municipality of Athens 17%. In Spain, the largest part of the migrant population is found in Madrid and Barcelona, where more than half of the Asians and Latin Americans residing in Spain are found. Africans are more dispersed, with 39% found in Madrid and Barcelona and amounting to 60% together with those residing in the areas of Almeria, Girona, and Murcia (Pumares Fernández, 2003). With regard to gender, there has been a considerable rise in the number of female migrants. In Greece, women comprise 45% of the total foreign population. Gendered nationalities exist, such as women from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, and Somalia, who work in the domestic sector, or men from North Africa, who work in agriculture and construction (Amitsis & Lazaridis, 2001b; Kavounidi, 2001). There is a significant problem of trafficking and of sexual exploitation of women, mainly from Eastern Europe, who come to work as waitresses, dancers, etc., and end up working in the sex-for-men industry. In Spain, although the presence of male migrants is visible in the social landscape, female migrants have for years remained “invisible”. (Escrivá, 2000). In recent years, the percentage of female immigrants has risen to be 45% of the total immigrant population (Pumares Fernández, 2003). One of the reasons for this rise was the Spanish immigration policy, which, from 1993 onward and with the adoption of a quota system, functioned as a system of concealed regularizations, providing an answer to the demand for women in the domestic sector (Ribas-Mateos, 2000). In Spain, Europeans are employed in industry, Africans in construction and agriculture, and Asians and Latin Americans in the service sector. In general, Europeans and Latin Americans occupy high-level positions, while Africans and Asians low-level ones. The changes that were noted in the agricultural sector in the last 15 years led to its dependence on the labor of foreign migrants, particularly from Northern Africa (Colectivo Ioé, 1995). In Greece, immigrants form Bulgaria and India are employed in agriculture, Pakistanis and Bangladeshi in industry, while Poles, Georgians, and to a lesser extent, Albanians in construction, where Albanians dominated until 2001 (Baldwin-Edwards & Kyriakou, 2004).

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Greece and Spain: Background Information

2.3 Immigration Policy in Greece and Spain Greece Until the 1990s, Greek immigration policy was concerned with issues relating to the Greek diaspora, outflows of workers, and repatriation. International treaties signed by Greece addressed the inflow of seasonal laborers, the kinds of temporary residences they required and regulated the terms of their contracts with employers (Petrakou, 2001). Law 4310/29 Initially, all migration issues were regulated under Law 4310 (1929) and the entry and residence of foreigners by international agreements. The few immigrants who came from Africa and Asia, as well as refugees (mainly Kurds) from Turkey, were received with sympathy by the public and the authorities (Κurtovik, 2001). This period of tolerance lasted until the end of the 1980s, when it became clear that new legislation was needed to respond to new conditions. In 1989 there was an increase in inflow but a reduction in the granting of work permits (Petrakou, 2001). Law 1975/91: Regarding Aliens This law attempted to deal with illegal immigration in accordance with EU immigration policy (Petrakou, 2001). It increased the powers of the Ministry of Public Order, the police, and the army, and it provided for the immediate deportation of anyone entering and residing in the country without the necessary documents. The penalty for illegal entry was five years’ imprisonment and the criteria for granting residence and work permits were particularly difficult to meet. The law was criticized as not abiding by the constitution and international treaties. It penalized immigration and introduced a series of prohibitions, while at the same time the number of deportations, mainly of Albanian immigrants, increased (Theophilopoulos, 1999). P.D. 358/97 and P.D. 359/97: The First Regularization Program Presidential Decrees 358 and 359 initiated the first regularization program in Greece, which took place over a period of five months (1 Jan. 1998 to 31 May 1998). At this time, the responsible authority was the Organization of Labor Force Employment, which received 371,523 applications. Although this was an impressive number, immigrant organizations estimated that at least 200,000 people did not apply for regularization either because they feared that registering their data would bring them under the complete control of authorities and make potential deportation easier, or because they did not have the necessary documents or because they were not properly informed about the process (Petrakou, 2001; Kavounidi, 2001). The presidential decrees and the way they were implemented were criticized by academics and labor unions for failing to combine control with integration, but also because they allowed for the development of informal economic activities at the expense of immigrants, as various intermediaries offered paid help to immigrants with their paperwork (see Psimmenos & 39

Picturing Immigration

Georgoulas, 2001). Despite these problems, the regularization program of 1998 offered the first demographic data of immigrants residing in Greece (Κavounidi, 2001). Law 2910/2001: The Second Regularization Program This new law introduced a number of innovations and adopted a more up-to-date approach to immigration, moving away from the logic of policing. The authority responsible for the co-ordination of immigration policy was now the Ministry of Interior, where a Directorate of Immigration and Foreigners was created (Bagavos & Papadopoulou, 2003). The Law 2910/2001 established a complex, expensive, and time-consuming process for granting a residence permit for reasons of work or studies, based on annual planning by the Organization for Labor Force Employment and taking into account the country’s work-force needs per sector. Every foreign worker was granted a work permit and a visa in his/her country of origin and upon arrival to Greece had to submit a new series of documents in order to be granted a residence permit (Triantafyllidou, 2005). The second regularization program based on Law 2910 lasted only two months (June– July 2001) and was prolonged for one more month. There were 370,000 applications. It is worth mentioning that the program received ample publicity and immigrants were strongly encouraged to participate, in contrast to the older program of 1998. However, the preparation for this brief regularization program was insufficient. Its limited duration as well as a lack of adequate personnel to process the applications created confusion among immigrants and allowed for their exploitation by intermediaries. Following various interventions, the 2001 law was revised and the deadlines were extended (Triantafyllidou, 2005). Law 3386/2005): The Third Regularization Program In 2005, new legislation was approved that incorporated Directive 2003/86/EC (regarding the right to family reunification) and Directive 2003/109/EC (regarding the status of longterm foreign residents) into the Greek legal system. The residence permit and the work permit were merged into a single document, the permit of residence for specific reasons (work, studies, entrepreneurship, etc.). The fee for a residence permit for one year was 150 euros, for two years 300 euros, and for three years 450 euros. Based on an annual report stating the needs of the national labor market in specific sectors, a determination is made regarding the maximum number of permits to be granted to foreigners. The process takes place through the consulates, as in the previous law. The new law, aiming at the social integration of immigrants, required the certification of knowledge of the Greek language and introductory courses in Greek history, culture, and lifestyle (Triantafyllidou, 2005). The Law 3386 provided for a third regularization program, to last for a period of three months (October 3–December 31, 2005). Due to limited participation, the deadline was extended three more times, finally ending on 2 May 2006. Despite its long duration, the number of residence permits granted was small and the regulation program was considered to be rather unsuccessful. 40

Greece and Spain: Background Information

Spain During the first years of its transition from sender to receiver of immigrants, Spain considered it to be a priority to control and restrict inflows. As a result of this restrictive policy, many immigrants had illegal status, since there was an actual demand for immigrant labor in the job market. This situation led subsequent governments to adopt measures that would reduce the number of illegal immigrants by regularizing them (García España, 2001). Law 7/85: Ley de Extranjeria (Aliens’ Law) Right before joining the EU (then EEC) in 1986, Spain passed Law 7/85 (Ley de Extranjeria) regarding the rights and freedoms of alien residents in Spain, aimed at controlling the borders and at protecting Spanish workers. In all subsequent revisions to the legislation, the basic principle followed by the Spanish government was to give priority and preference to Spanish employees over foreign workers (Alonso, 2003). This law treated immigration as an issue of public order and control and made a clear distinction between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants. It did not provide for the granting of permanent residence permits or family reunification, and it placed the granting of visas under the discretion of authorities following particularly stringent administrative criteria. Those who did not possess the necessary (and difficult-to-acquire) documents did not have any rights and could be deported immediately (Prieto Ramos, 2004). The First Regularization Program (1986) The passing of Law 7 was followed a year later by an initial attempt at regularization. During its six days of operation (25–31 March), 43,815 applications were received, of which 23,000 were approved and only 13,000 were renewed for the following year. This program was considered a failure, due to the limited publicity it received and particularly to the stringent criteria that were applied (García Εspaña, 2001). The Second Regularization Program (1991) Given the inefficacy of Law 7/85, new criteria were adopted for the regularization of immigrants residing in Spain. The new procedure was based on the previous law, but it constituted the first step for the adoption of a true immigration policy in the context of harmonization of regional policies regarding entry and residence in the EU (García España, 2001). Thus, the Spanish government implemented a faster and less stringent procedure that lasted much longer than the previous one (this time for six months, from 10 June through 10 December) and during it about 110,000 of the 132,934 (according to the Ministry of Labor) immigrants were granted residence permits (Prieto Ramos, 2004). Family members of those who received a permit were given the opportunity to apply for their own regularization until 10 March of the following year. The problem was that, until that date, regularization applications filed in the previous year were still pending (García España, 2001).

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The Quota System (1993) In order to cope with migration pressure and reduce the number of illegals gaining entry into the country, a quota system was introduced in 1992 according to which, a certain number of immigrants would be regularized each year, depending on the needs of the labor market (García España, 2001). The number of positions covered started at 20,600 in 1993 and rose to 30,079 by 2002 (Roca Parés, 2003). The majority of these positions were available to women immigrants with the aim of meeting the demand for workers in the domestic sector (72% of available positions in 1993 referred to household services while only 2% to agriculture, 20% to other sectors and none at all to construction) (Izquierdo Escribano, 1996). With the adoption of a quota system in 1993, Spain became the first country in the EU to distance itself from the policy of zero acceptance of immigrants in the 1990s even though, in reality, this system granted more permits to immigrants already residing in Spain, instead of allowing new ones to enter the country (Prieto Ramos, 2004). Reglamento de Extranjeria (Regulation of Aliens) (1996) The 1996 Regulation was followed by a new program that regularized 31,000 immigrants. Less stringent criteria were introduced, permanent residence and work permits were granted to immigrants (after they maintained legal residence in the state for more than six years), the quota system was legally established, and provisions for family reunification were set. It is worth noting that this was the first legal document in which Spain was referred to as an immigrant-receiving country (Prieto Ramos, 2004). The Ad Hoc Commissions (1998) Another attempt to reduce the number of illegal immigrants was the establishment of commissions to review the ad hoc regularization applications of immigrants who resided illegally in Spain but did not fall under any of the existing eligible categories. These commissions comprised representatives of the state, NGOs, and immigrant organizations. However, they were often biased and accessible to only a few privileged immigrants with the appropriate connections (García España, 2001). Law 4 (2000): The Fourth Regularization Program Law 4/2000, which replaced Law 7/85, expanded the rights of legal as well as illegal immigrants and established a regularization procedure for those who resided in Spain continuously for two years, were registered in the municipality of their domicile, and were in a position to support themselves financially (Prieto Ramos, 2004). Furthermore, a royal decree provided for a regularization procedure for those who resided in Spain before 1 Jan. 1999 and could prove that they had applied for a residence or a work permit or that they had received such a permit within the last three years. Even though Law 4/2000 was accepted by NGOs and immigrant organizations, it was revised and replaced with Law 8/2001 a year later by the next government. Law 8/2001 clearly differentiated between “legal” and “illegal” immigrants and expanded the conditions under 42

Greece and Spain: Background Information

which deportation was possible. The revision coincided with the regularization program, which was taking place under Law 4/2000. As a result, there were protests, demonstrations, and hunger strikes all over the country. This situation, together with an accident, in January 2001, in which many immigrants from Ecuador died, led the government to allow regularization for humanitarian reasons. Thus, 332,761 immigrants without legal documents applied for regularization (Prieto Ramos, 2004). Regulation Regarding Aliens (2004) and the 2005 Regularization Program Under the relevant Law of 2004, a fifth regularization program took place between 2 February and 7 May 2005. It was criticized because it set rather stringent criteria: proof of continuous residence for two years and employment of at least one year, or three years of residence and an employment contract as well as kinship with another immigrant residing in Spain. However, 700,000 applications were filed of which only 21,000 were rejected. Taking into account that those residing illegally in Spain amounted to 1,355,000 at this time, the program was considered particularly successful. Immigration Policy in Spain at the Local Level Local governments have jurisdiction to form their own policies regarding the social integration of immigrants only and do not have any control over entry into the country, the regularization of illegal aliens, etc. (Alonso, 2003). As a result, a mosaic of different policies affecting immigrants and social integration are found across Spain, from Catalonia in the north, which has the highest percentage of foreign residents and has instituted leading approaches to the issues, to the economically weaker Southern provinces, where immigrants are employed temporarily in the agriculture.

2.4 Historical and Social Background of Greece and Spain History One of the most important chapters in the history of Greece and Spain is that of Muslim occupation: the Ottoman rule in Greece, which lasted for four centuries and the Moorish rule in Spain, which lasted twice as long. Greeks regard the period of Ottoman-Turkish rule over their country as a dark period, during which they were being regarded as slaves, the Greek language was banned, and forced Islamization was common practice. The legends, stories, and heroic deeds relating to the Greek struggle for independence are deeply rooted in the Greek consciousness in folk songs, oral narratives, school books, and official events (anniversaries, school celebrations, parades, etc.) aimed at preserving the national legacy. The modern Greek state, which was founded with the help and encouragement of the European powers as a protectorate, was territorially restricted and did not include most of the land on which the ancient Greek 43

Picturing Immigration

civilization had flourished and was still inhabited by Greeks. The effort to regain the Greek geographical world lasted until the failure of the Asia Minor Expedition in 1922 (discussed below). In Spain, the Moorish invasion and subsequent Islamization of the Christian inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula was completed by the 8th century, by which time the Arabs had conquered all of present-day Spain, except for its northern areas. During the Muslim occupation, which lasted for eight centuries, the southern province of Andalusia (known as Al-Andalus) became a significant cultural and financial centre of the Arab world. Some of the most important sights and monuments of present-day Spain were created as a part of the Arabic culture which flourished in Andalusia (the Alhambra in Granada, the Great Mosque of Córdoba, and the Alcázar in Seville, to name a few). The effort of the Christians to regain the Iberian peninsula during the Reconquista lasted for six centuries and was completed in 1492 with the fall of the Emirate of Granada to the victorious Catholic monarchs, Fernando and Isabella. That year constitutes an important point in the history of Spain. On the one hand, the victory over the Muslims signalled the beginning of a new era for the Iberian peninsula. The Catholic rulers aimed to establish the absolute predominance of the Christian religion on the peninsula by expelling the Muslim as well as the Jewish population, and by Christianizing those who remained. At the same time, the discovery of the Americas by explorers sailing on behalf of the Spanish crown gave Spain the prestige and, as soon as gold and silver began flowing back across the Atlantic, the economic capacity of a colonial power equal to the rest of its European counterparts. In the following centuries Spain played a significant role in the cultural, political, and military developments of Europe. For Greece the first half of the 20th century – particularly the first decades – was a period of wars, territorial rearrangements, and political instability. After the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, Greece had regained most of the territory comprising areas of ancient Macedonia and Thrace and expanded its northern borders. The Asia Minor Expedition took place a few years after the First World War. It was carried out in order to regain the territories of the ancient Greek world that still contained Greek communities with the view of creating an ethnically homogeneous Greek state. The Expedition, which was encouraged by the European powers as a reward for Greece’s participation on the winning side in the First World War, ended in a disaster when the Greek army proceeded further inland and the European powers withdrew their support. Now called “the Asia Minor Catastrophe”, it resulted in the mass expulsion of Greeks living on the coastline of Asia Minor by the new Turkish state. About 1.4 million refugees arrived in Greece and did not receive a very warm welcome, even though they were Greeks themselves. The long period of Turkish rule over Greece, the Asia Minor Catastrophe of 1922, the expulsion of Greeks from Pontus and Istanbul, and the tensions in Greco-Turkish relations because of sovereignty disputes in the Aegean Sea as well as because of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, lead to the demonization of Turkey and the sense that Greece has been victimized in the mind of the average Greek citizen. This sense of threat, commonly referred to as the “danger from the East”, was cultivated and the defensive reflexes of public opinion 44

Greece and Spain: Background Information

were activated. In recent years, however, attempts to promote consent and co-operation between Greece and Turkey seem to have produced results and the Greco-Turkish relations, although still facing challenges, have definitely improved. At the end of the Second World War, a civil war broke out in Greece. The war lasted for 3.5 years (1946–49) and to a great extent remains a taboo topic since the country still hasn’t achieved full recovery. The last dictatorship constitutes an equally deep trauma, considering that thirty years later its repercussions still define the political and media discourse and political choices of politicians and voters alike. The Left–Right divide is felt very strong in Greece and is reflected in the media as well, particularly the traditional or older print media, which have clear ideological orientations and are closely affiliated to the major political parties of the Left and the Right. The interference of foreign powers in the Civil War as well as in the seven-year-long rule of the Greek military junta (1967–74), as had happened with the Asia Minor Expedition and even with the creation of the modern Greek state, has given birth to a rhetoric of international conspiracies against Greece (see Petrakou, 2001). When the dictatorship ended in 1974 and Greece joined the EU (then the EEC) in 1981, a new era of peace and political stability began. In the 1990s however, with the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the awakening of nationalism in the Balkans, a new “threat” appeared in the neighborhood: the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). When the Slavic FYROM published national maps that included Greek territory and claimed an exclusive right to use the name “Macedonia”, Greece perceived these actions as a threat to its territorial integrity as well as to its national identity and cultural heritage. At the same time, the rise of Albanian nationalism and the support it received from the United States activated Greek nationalistic reflexes and fears about the possible creation of a “Greater Albania” that would include parts of north-western Greece. Mutual enmity had long marked bilateral relations between Greece and Albania, on the one hand because of the long oppression of Greeks in Albania during Enver Hoxha’s regime and on the other hand because of underlying mutual disputes over sovereignty in the province of Epirus, which is divided between Albania and Greece. The increasing sense of insecurity was cultivated by the media and lead to the transition of the Greek party of the extreme Right (LA.O.S.) to a political entity of considerable power. In Spain, the political crisis that broke out during the 1920s lead to the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). Nationals of various different countries took part in the war, supporting Franco’s opponents (republicans, socialists, anarchists), and Moroccan volunteers fought on Franco’s side. The number of Moroccan volunteers is estimated to be from 50,000 to 87,000. Whatever the real number, this army played a decisive role in the Spanish Civil War and most importantly in battles that lead to Franco’s victory. The war resulted in a million Spanish fatalities and half a million refugees, who crossed the border into neighboring France (Téllez, 2001). During the Franco’s forty-year-long dictatorship, many members of the Spanish intelligentsia left the country. The arts, philosophy, literature, and academia experienced a brain drain as 45

Picturing Immigration

many leading intellectuals fled to Mexico and other countries. The fleeing of intellectuals was followed by migration of workers to Northern Europe and America (Téllez, 2001). At the same time, there was an attempt to homogenize the country and promote “Hispanicity” through and emphasis on the use of the Castilian language and restrictions on the use of other languages spoken in different provinces (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, etc.). When Franco died in 1975, the dictatorship ended and the democratization of Spain started. Democracy was restored in 1978 in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy following the model of other European countries and the various administrative districts were recognized as Autonomous Communities with their own local government and their own official language, together with Castilian.

Economy After joining the EU (then the EEC), Greece and Spain experienced a period of economic prosperity, mainly due to the financial aid they received from the EU. Despite the assistance, the two countries remained in the group of the poorer and least-developed countries of the EU. The economy in Greece is characterized by the existence of a parallel “black economy”, estimated at accounting for 30% to 40% of the national GDP, by informal relations based on personal networks, which facilitate the participation of people in the parallel job market, and involvement in more than one position and interest groups with the goal to raise personal income. In addition, the development of the services sector as well as the existence of many small-size family enterprises and of the agricultural sector favors the temporary employment of cheap labor (Petrakou, 2001). Unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment, is high in Greece and Spain and mostly affects young people and women. The monthly salary in Greece and Spain is among the lowest in the Eurozone, but it is about three to six times higher than in the countries of origin of the majority of immigrants (Fakiolas & King, 1996).

Society Until the middle of the 20th century, society in Greece and Spain was mainly agrarian, with the largest part of the population residing in rural areas, leading a traditional way of life with religion, patriarchy, and tradition at its core. The 1960s and 1970s was a period marked by major changes, such as industrialization, the modernization of the agricultural sector, and mass migration abroad as well as internal migration from rural areas to urban centers. Despite the change in the way of life and the rise in living standards, the traditional values of attachment to homeland, religion, and family remained as the backbone of the two societies. In Greece, national identity is defined by adherence to the Orthodox religion, use of the Greek language, and identification with the glorious past of Ancient Greece. Religion 46

Greece and Spain: Background Information

has been an important element in the formation of the identity of the modern Greek nation and has played a significant role in the struggle for freedom from Ottoman (Muslim) rule. Language and religion became the means through which the continuity of Hellenism and of ancient Greek culture were confirmed, as was the belief that Greekness can only be inherited, not acquired (Petrakou, 2001). In Spain, adherence to Catholicism confirms Hispanicity, European identity, and differentiation from the Muslim world, which remains geographically close. After all, it was the Catholic monarchs who carried out the important chapter of the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula and established a dynamic era of Spanish dominion. It was the same Catholic monarchs who drove the Muslims away and achieved the Hispanization of the Iberian peninsula. Family remains a powerful institution and in many cases replaces the inadequate state in areas such as education, housing, and social care (Petrakou, 2001). As a result, young people, the majority of whom have a university education of many years, enter the job market late and are selective in their choices. Consequently, low-paid positions, primarily those with low social status, remain vacant and are usually taken up by immigrants who do not have high expectations or demands and are willing to accept the low wages offered to them. In recent years, economic stagnation and uncertainty in the labor market has caused social polarization and threatened social cohesion. There seems to be a transition under way from a middle-class society to one in which there will be increasing gaps in salary levels, working conditions, and social welfare provision (Colectivo Ioé, 1995).

Demographics As in the rest of Europe, the number of births in Southern Europe has decreased considerably. In 2002, the lowest fertility rates on the planet were recorded in Southern Europe. Spain and Greece recorded rates of 1.25 and 1.29 respectively.1 On the contrary, birth rates among the foreign population residing in the two countries are high and rising. In 1999, there were estimated 22 births for every 1000 foreign residents, more than double the birth rate among Spanish nationals, which was as low as 9.4 per 1000 (Izquierdo Escribano, 2003). The high birth rates among immigrants has raised the total number of births in Greece and Spain and improved the overall ratio between old and young in the society, however.

Public Opinion and Immigrants In the mind of the average Spaniard, the term “immigrant” corresponds to “Moroccan”. It is true that Moroccans constitute the most numerous immigrant group in the country. The

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Picturing Immigration

profile of the typical Moroccan immigrant is: male, 20–40 years old, employed in construction, agriculture, or low-profile positions in the services sector (Izquierdo Escribano, 1996). In addition, the stereotypical immigrant belongs to the most socially maligned group: Arabs/Muslims (Izquierdo Escribano, 1996). Arabs are also considered to be the group that is the most difficult to integrate. Izquierdo Escribano notes that it is difficult for Spaniards to acknowledge the existence of similarities between themselves and Arabs, and that Spaniards prefer to focus on the differences in order to distinguish themselves as clearly as possible from them (1996). The majority of Spaniards believe that it is impossible to integrate Arabs into Spanish society since their culture – especially their religious beliefs – is considered incompatible with it. In addition, the arrival of immigrants from Morocco is often referred to as “the return of the Moors”, a phrase that shows an underlying fear that a second Moorish invasion of Spain is taking place (see López García et al., 1993). Furthermore, Spanish people believe that there are already too many immigrants in Spain and that there will be even more in the years to come. Izquierdo Escribano calls this belief an “invasion obsession” (1996). In reality, the amount of immigrants is Spain is smaller than in other European countries of (mainly Northern Europe) and it is also smaller than the number of Spanish immigrants abroad. According to Izquierdo Escribano (1996), the collective unconscious of the Spanish is still marked by the 1778 stigma, when all sorts of “unwanted” persons, from beggars to criminals, were forced to emigrate. It seems that even today, immigrants cannot escape the stigma of being believed to be incapable of being efficient workers or of being outright criminal. For many years surveys have shown very low percentages of xenophobia in Spanish society. These results are also confirmed by Eurobarometer surveys that reveal lower percentages of xenophobia in Spain compared to other EU countries. It is believed that this is so because there are fewer immigrants in Spain than in other EU countries and that the presence of immigrants is still a very recent and new phenomenon for the Spanish (Díez, 1999). However, as Díez (1999) observes, negative attitude towards immigrants is officially frowned upon by actors with social influence, such as politicians and the media. As a result, people who hold such politically incorrect views and are negative toward immigrants and immigration feel rejected by society and hesitate to express directly their negative views in public. Thus, what studies reveal is actually an ambivalent position: on the one hand, interviewees do not consider themselves to be racist and when asked directly they express positive views regarding immigrants. Nevertheless, they do state that they do sense racism and xenophobic attitudes in their immediate social environment, from friends, colleagues, relatives, neighbors, etc. (Díez, 1999). In addition, the majority of Spaniards do not believe that the presence of immigrants affects Spanish cultural identity, nor the level of unemployment or salaries, nor that they increase crime rates. On the other hand, however, answers to indirect questions reveal their true opinion about immigration and immigrants: there is fear that immigrants have “invaded” Spain, that they are already “too many”, and that the number 48

Greece and Spain: Background Information

allowed entry must be reduced (Calvo Buezas, 2000). When asked about the main reasons for high unemployment or crime rates, the most common reply is “immigrants”. What’s more, immigrants are considered by 37% of respondents to be one of the biggest social problems in the country (following terrorism, unemployment, and mad-cow disease). In other words, the answer given by Spanish people seems to be “no, but” (“no, I am not a racist, but…”, “I am not against immigrants, but there are too many/they are responsible for unemployment/ crime, etc.). Negative attitudes toward immigrants and high levels of xenophobia rates are most commonly found among people with the following demographic attributes: low level of education, low social class, old age, political/ideological orientation to the Right, low exposure to information, sense of belonging to a small community (e.g. village, town, Autonomous Community). On the other hand, those who hold more tolerant or positive views usually have a high level of education and social status, are ideologically positioned toward the Left, identify with large or supranational communities (e.g. Spain, Europe, the world), and have traveled abroad (Díez, 1999). A further conclusion that can be drawn from existing studies is that most Spaniards do not have personal experience with immigrants. Only a small percentage state they ever had a substantial conversation with an immigrant or that they maintain friendly relations with an immigrant or that they have an immigrant colleague (Díez, 1999). This probably explains why in the Autonomous Communities with high numbers of immigrants (Andalusia, the Canary Islands, Catalonia, Madrid, Valencia) xenophobia rates are lower than in areas with fewer immigrants. According to Eurobarometer and the results of the European Social Surveys (2003), high rates of xenophobia are recorded in Greece with 59% of the population (the highest in the EU) expressing resistance to multiculturalism and 87.5% holding negative views about immigrants. Other research results reveal that 60% of Greeks wish that immigrants would leave Greece and that 72% think the police should be stricter with them. However, 43% of immigrants say that most Greeks are friendly toward them.2 The presence of immigrants in Greece is considered by some as “part of a wider conspiracy, by foreign interests, to corrupt and shrink the Greek nation” (Petrakou, 2001). Research conducted in the 1990s among policemen in the area near the city of Kalamata revealed that many of them believe that immigration is instigated in order to create minority communities, with the ultimate goal being to alter the ethnic and religious balance in the Balkans (Petrakou, 2001). Similar research among members of the judiciary and the police force3 showed that the majority of judges consider immigrants to be responsible for increased crime rates and believe that there are too many immigrants, but feel sympathy for them, knowing that they live under difficult conditions. Policemen, on the other hand, consider immigrants to be responsible for unemployment and crime, while both judges and police officers believe that Greek public opinion is positioned negatively toward immigrants and that racism smolders in Greek society. However, they suggest that such racism is provoked by immigrants. 49

Picturing Immigration

Xenophobia in Greece allegedly stems from the fear of the Greeks that they will lose their national identity, an identity that not only was shaped in its current form relatively recently but is still being challenged by neighboring countries, particularly since the early 1990s (Tsoukala, 1999). For the average Greek, the term “immigrant” coincides with Albanian man. Albanians are the most numerous group of immigrants in Greece and from the beginning of the 1990s, when they started arriving in the country, the average citizen associated them with criminal activity. According to Karydis (2001), the demonization of Albanians is connected to reasons such as their massive as well as illegal arrival, their high visibility at the start of the 1990s, and their involvement in petty crime for reasons of survival (theft, burglaries in country houses, etc.). A factor of crucial importance for the formation of a negative, if not hostile, attitude toward Albanian immigrants has been the negative tenor of the relations between Greece and Albania, mainly due to the oppression of the Greek minority in Southern Albania (Northern Epirus). In addition, Albanians are marked by the cultural stigma of being “underdeveloped Balkan savages”, that, is dangerous people with an inclination for criminality. Even though Greece belongs to the Balkans geographically, it has been clearly distancing itself culturally and politically from the region and identifiyng with the West. Interviews with Albanian immigrants (Lazaridis, 2004) show that the xenophobic or hostile attitudes of Greeks toward them occur in all parts of daily life in Greece, including during conversations with colleagues or employers, on public transport, in shops and restaurants, etc. It is worth noting that such practices are considered normal and unproblematic by Greeks (for example, it is considered normal by landlords to reject potential tenants if they are Albanian). In a research conducted at the University of Western Macedonia,4 students declared that immigrants should have the same opportunities as Greeks in job seeking but consider them responsible for unemployment and the drug trade. Another research project, conducted in the area of Thessaloniki, shows that the majority of respondents believe that the solution to the problem of unemployment is to reduce the number of immigrants.5

Media and Migrants in Greece and Spain In his research comparing the Spanish and Irish press during the 1990s, Prieto Ramos (2004) notes that the Spanish newspapers (ABC and El País) referred to immigrants using their nationality and that nationality was often mentioned unnecessarily in reports, particularly negative ones. Nationality as well as religion were mentioned in reports about Islam in a way that associated social problems with ethnic differences. As a rule, such reports presented Moroccans as being either involved actively in criminal activities or, in passive roles, being arrested, controlled, and expelled by the state. In these reports representatives of the police were presented as particularly reliable sources, while the views and experiences of immigrants themselves regarding the issue under discussion was of secondary importance. 50

Greece and Spain: Background Information

In the mid-1990s, the term “illegal” was the second most frequently used term of reference, following the term “immigrants”. In general, the illegal status of immigrants was notably stressed, while there prevailed a distinction between the term magrebí, referring in a leveling manner to all Moroccans and other Northern Africans, and the term subsahariano, referring to all black people from sub-Saharan Africa. Lastly, the arrival of immigrants was presented as a dangerous phenomenon with potentially catastrophic consequences through the use of words such as “wave” and “avalanche”. According to van Dijk (2003), the discourse of the national newspapers is no different to that of the politicians, who treat immigration in a more politically correct manner than the local press. Nevertheless, a general tendency toward the negative representation of immigrants is noted. The theme that appears most frequently is that of “illegal entry”, mainly by sea, particularly when pregnant women or children are among the immigrants or when corpses are washed ashore. There is a tendency to victimize immigrants and present them in passive roles, and active demonization seems to be avoided, as they are not directly connected to criminal behavior. The police and the Spanish authorities in general (“us”, the Spaniards and the Spanish state) are presented as the “good guys” who save or rescue the illegal immigrants/victims. Female immigrants are often presented as “prostitutes” and “sex slaves”, always in the role of the victim but also with a leveling “label” that associates them with low morality and delinquent behavior. In general, and despite the victimization of immigrants, there exists an indirect correlation with crime through the frequent references to violence and criminality among immigrants. In cases of crimes committed by Spaniards, no reference to nationality is made. However, such reference is made when immigrants are involved in crime. To a great extent, articles presenting the reasons behind immigration are absent as is the point of view of immigrants themselves (see Bañon-Hernández, 2002). Martínez Corcuera (1998) distinguishes two phases in the treatment of immigration by the media: the first phase (the beginning of the 1990s) is that of exclusion, where immigrants are invisible. In the second phase (from the end of 1990s onwards), immigrants are considered a threat to social order. Immigration is presented always in relation to police intervention and alleged criminality. Rizo (2000) notes the existence of a humanitarian dimension as well: the media incite not only fear but also compassion or pity, often indirectly, in order to stress the difference between “us” and “them”. However, according to Rizo, fear often overrides compassion and it also lasts longer. Prejudice toward migrants is further enhanced by media-transmitted images of their countries of origin. For example, Miralles (1999) notes that Algeria is mentioned in the Spanish newspapers only in relation to acts of violence, attacks, deaths, and oppression. Other countries of the East (see Miret Magdalena, 2003) and of Latin America are presented in a similar manner. Elite discourse expressed by the media in Spain is the discourse of the (a) white, (b) Spanish, (c) male. However, it is noteworthy that there do exist articles on the issue of xenophobia and prejudice faced by immigrants in Spain. One cannot ignore the significant 51

Picturing Immigration

antiracist movement in Spain, which is stronger than those in other EU countries (for example, the Netherlands), nor the fact that the forty-year dictatorship has left, as a reaction, a more liberal perspective in the media (as well as in universities) than is found in the Northern European countries, which have not experienced such political anomalies in their recent past (van Dijk, 2005). There are cases where immigration is treated in a positive way and with a disposition of solidarity. For example, the television program Solidarios in Andalucia and Valencia, as well as the radio program Tertulía entre Hermanos/Meeting among Brothers in Murcia, which received an award from the Institute of Migration and Social Services (IMSERSO, now the Institute for the Elderly and Social Services). Furthermore, in the national media, there are shows such as Cooperantes (TVE), Mundo Solidario/Solidary World (Cadena Ser), Un Mundo sin Barreras/A World without Borders (Onda Cero), Voluntarios/Volunteers (Radio España), Sin Fronteras/Without Borders (Radio 3). Lastly, the issue of immigration has started making its appearance in television fiction programs since the beginning of the 21st century (Bañón-Hernandez, 2002). In a study by the European Research Centre for Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER), Triantafyllidou (2002) presents the way in which the Greek media handles immigration-related issues in 1995–2000. She mentions that the majority of daily newspapers and of private TV channels adopted a nationalistic, xenophobic, and racist attitude promoting the idea of ethnic homogeneity and purity in Greece. References to ethnic minorities, immigrants, and neighboring countries were connected to conspiracy theories and to the rhetoric of a national threat, a threat to the homogeneity and purity of the Greek nation, coming from external as well as internal enemies. News reports regarding minorities or immigrants were presented from the standpoint of dominant political actors, such as the government, the police, or other state authorities. The point of view or discourse of immigrants themselves was either neglected or presented as being of a lesser significance, while in other cases, the media adopted a paternalistic position. Reference to antiracist action was absent to a great extent while NGOs active in such matters were accused as national traitors. Particularly in the coverage of immigration-related issues, Triantafyllidou discerns an Albanophobia (especially in 1996–97) as Albanians were most frequently the target of negative stereotypes, with that of the “criminal” being the most common. Negative treatment of Albanians in Greece was connected to the oppression of the Greek minority in Albania and thus appeared justified. In his research in the local press of Thessaloniki, Pavlou (2001) points out that immigrants are defined by their nationality alone, which is overtly stressed. According to the same research, Albanians come first in negative reports related to crime, even when they appear as victims. As Pavlou notes, “nationality becomes an attribute, elevated to a token of criminality or criminal behavior” (2001). It is noteworthy that such reports were based on journalists’ conjectures. Furthermore, “Albanian criminality” is embedded in reports that do not contain news of committed crimes but only the fear of perpetration. Such reports were based on the word of civilians who merely express a general feeling of 52

Greece and Spain: Background Information

insecurity and xenophobia, which is generated by news reports of criminal acts. In other words, it is a vicious circle where the media reproduce news reports in a spectacular way, causing civilians to become fearful. Then the media reproduce the civilians’ xenophobic statements, thus enhancing the stereotype of immigrant criminality, particularly that of Albanian criminality. A remarkable case is that of the village of Palaio Keramidi, where an after-sunset curfew was imposed on all Albanian immigrants. As the local inhabitants admitted one year later (in 1999), there had been no criminal activity by Albanians in the area, but the fear of crime which led them to take this extreme precautionary measure had been caused by the media (Pavlou, 2001). According to Pavlou (2001), there has been a change in the position taken and the terminology used by the media in recent years: the term “illegal immigrant” was replaced by “foreign immigrant”. This change could be attributed to the improvement in the relations between Greece and its neighboring countries, but also to the acceptance of reality, that a large number of immigrants have been residing in Greece for the last ten years. Besides, the National Radio and Television Council urges journalists to refrain from mentioning the nationality of the perpetrators of crimes in news reports (Triantafyllidou, 2002). In the research conducted by Konstantinidou (2001) regarding the representation of immigrants’ criminality in five Greek newspapers6 during the first regularization program of 1998, she noted the existence of a dichotomist system of “us” and “the foreigners”. While the first group (we) is defined by personal attributes (professional, psychological, physical), the second group (foreigners) is defined on the basis of nationality, with emphasis on Albanian nationality. The word “Albanian” functions as a stereotype, as a verbal signifier for the negative attributes of anyone of that specific nationality. The meaning of this stereotype is confirmed and enhanced rather than weakened by the attempt of the so called progressive press to “exorcise” it by using its opposite, that is, by presenting cases portraying the “Albanian as victim” or the “honest Albanian”. Additionally, during the same time period, reports emphasized the rise of the crime rates in general, as well as the social reaction to the problem of criminality, which was perceived as being closely connected to immigration. The represented social reaction is summarized and presented as a generalized social demand for stricter controls on immigrants. A similar study of two national newspapers in Greece during the decade of the 1990s7 reveals that immigrant criminality, particularly that of Albanians, is overtly stressed in a stigmatizing manner and is represented in a disproportionately negative way and in a disproportionately high percentage, considering the reality as it appears in statistical data provided by the police. More specifically, immigrant involvement in criminal activity is presented as being three times greater than it really was, according to official statistics. After all, about half of the crimes committed by immigrants were violations of the legislation regarding aliens, mainly illegal entry and illegal work (Moschopoulou, 2005).

53

Picturing Immigration

Notes 1. Siomos, D., Kappi, C., Papaliou, O., Papapetrou, G., Fagadaki, E. (eds) (2005) The Social Portrait of Greece 2003–2004. Athens: National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) – Institute of Social Policy. The research can be found in Greek at http://www2.ekke.gr/main.php?id=383 2. As reported in the Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia (13 Nov. 2005). 3. As reported in the Athens daily newspaper Kathimerini (24 July 2005). 4. Reported in Eleftherotypia (27 March 2005). 5. According to research conducted by KAPA-Research, published in Angelioforos (13 Sept. 2004). 6. These newspapers are Eletftheros, Eleftheros Typos, Elefteherotypia, Ethnos, and Ta Nea and the time frame was from 1 Feb. 1998 to 30 May 1998. 7. These newspapers are Apogevmatini and Ta Nea and the time frame was 1990–1999.

54

Part II

Chapter 3 The Visual Representation of Immigrants

3.1 Frame A: The Immigrant as “Other”

S

everal techniques used in the visual framing of otherness were identified in the photographs under study and led to the formation of this frame. Such techniques are depiction in groups, the use of small, passport-type photographs, depicted limited social interaction with members of the local population, the use of long camera distance, lack of a symbolic communication with the viewer, depiction of expressionless faces, and depiction of immigrants out of any context. As has been analyzed in Chapter 1, presenting people and particularly members of a minority, in groups is a standard way to overshadow individuality and attribute common characteristics to all members of a given social group. Through this representational technique it is implied that the social group in question is a distinct social type, different from “us”, the dominant majority. In this particular case, the social type we are dealing with is that of “the immigrant”, the “other” of contemporary societies.

GROUP/INDIVIDUAL PHOTOGRAPHS per country (2)

GROUP/INDIVIDUAL PHOTOGRAPHS

46.90%

81.70%

42.10% 67.80% 34.70% 32.10% 25.70% 32.10%

17%

17%

group with few people

group with many people GREEK

group

individual

individual

GREEK

SPANISH

SPANISH

Figure 1: Group and individual photographs in the Greek and Spanish newspapers. 59

Picturing Immigration

Eleftherotypia, 28/12/2005

Ta Nea, 09/03/2005

Ta Nea, 09/11/2005

El Mundo, 03/04/2005

Ta Nea, 09/11/2005

Characteristic examples of small, passport-type photographs.

In all six newspapers, the majority of the photographs portray immigrants in groups, with a preference, however, for portrayal in small groups. The difference between group and individual photographs is far greater in the Spanish newspapers (64.7 points), whereas in the Greek papers it is almost half (35.7 points). Compared to the Spanish newspapers the Greek ones contain almost twice as many individual photographs. It is worth noting, however, that most of the photographs depicting individuals in the Greek newspapers are passport-type photos, like the ones shown above.

SIZE OF PHOTOGRAPHS per country 48.10% 46.30%

41.50% 28%

19.50% 12.10%

large

medium GREEK

small SPANISH

Figure 2: Size of photographs of immigrants in the Greek and Spanish newspapers. 60

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

The use of small, passport-type photographs (mug shots) is particularly interesting. Such photos are mainly used by Ta Nea, Eleftherotypia and ABC. According to previous studies, small photographs are considered the least important in a newspaper since, as has been proven by experimental methods, the readers’ look is directed at the large photos (Garcia & Stark, 1991). However, as will also be analyzed later in this chapter, photographs of this type, through their resemblance to criminals’ photos, produce meaning by associating immigrants with crime, even when the accompanying text does not support such a connection and even when immigrants are portrayed as victims and not as perpetrators. The highest percentages of individual photographs in both groups of newspapers come from Ta Nea (Center Left) and Eleftherotypia (Left), whereas the lowest percentage comes from another Greek newspaper, Kathimerini (Center Right), which, also, contains the greatest percentage of group photographs with over ten persons (64.5%), followed by the three Spanish newspapers, with a much lower percentage, however (33% to 37%). It seems that the more “professional” the newspaper the more group photographs it contains, whereas the “popular” newspapers contain more individual photographs. In the Spanish newspapers and in the Greek Kathimerini (Center Right), which share a similarly professional and serious style and format, group photographs are significantly more present than the individual ones, whereas in Eleftherotypia (Left) and Ta Nea (Center Left), which share a more popular style, the difference is smaller. Ideology may be a reason behind this differentiation, but this applies only to the Greek press. The two newspapers affiliated with the Left (Ta Nea and Eleftherotypia) treat immigrants as individuals much more often (41.5% and 35.8% respectively) than the newspaper of the Center Right (3%), which clearly places emphasis on their depiction in groups (97%). In the Spanish press however, ideology doesn’t result in differentiation, as all three Spanish newspapers show a clear preference for depicting immigrants in groups. GROUP/INDIVIDUAL PHOTOGRAPHS per newspaper 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% group with few people

group with many people

individual

KATHIMERINI

TANEA

ELEFTHEROTYPIA

EL PAIS

EL MUNDO

ABC

Figure 3: Group and individual photographs in each newspaper. 61

Picturing Immigration

One could argue that the depiction of immigrants in crowds can be attributed to the fact that the sample was gathered during the regularization program, when immigrants lined up in order to take part in the procedure or gathered outside the regularization services waiting for their turn. Indeed, many of the group photographs show immigrants waiting in lines for exactly this reason. Nevertheless, in these photographs the emphasis is placed on the crowd itself and not on the regularization program. The reason for the gathering of these crowds or the formation of lines can be assumed from the context (for example the title, caption, article, or special report on regularization, etc.) and not from the photograph itself. The photograph is not anchored to the issue of regularization. There is also a significant number of photographs that are not at all related to the regularization program and are attached to articles that are similarly unrelated to this particular issue but that, nevertheless, depict immigrants in groups. Immigrants are depicted in groups in the majority of the sample, regardless of thematic context.

Eleftherotypia, 12/11/2005

Eleftherotypia, 12/11/2005

Eleftherotypia, 06/11/2005

El País, 14/02/2005

El Mundo, 10/02/2005

Eleftherotypia, 13/11/2005

ABC, 02/05/2005

Characteristic examples of group photographs in the Greek and Spanish newspapers. Note: In the Spanish newspapers, the theme (regularization) is concluded from the context (caption and title), something that does not apply to the Greek newspapers, where photographs are more often not at all anchored to the regularization program.

Both Spanish and Greek newspapers depict immigrants, as a rule, together with other foreigners/immigrants. This is true for more than half (54%) of the photographs found in the Spanish newspapers and almost half (47.8%) of the ones found in the Greek newspapers. The percentage of photographs showing immigrants with members of the local population is smaller (12% in the Spanish newspapers and almost 9% in the Greek ones) and so is 62

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

SOCIAL INTERACTION per country

unclear with foreigners and locals with locals

3% 5.20% 12.10% 5.70% 12.10% 8.90% 54.20%

with foreigners

47.80% SPANISH

GREEK

Figure 4: Social interaction of immigrants in the photographs of the Greek and Spanish newspapers.

the percentage of photographs showing them in mixed groups, with other foreigners and natives (12% in the Spanish and 5.7% in the Greek newspapers). The depiction of immigrants in limited social interaction with members of the local population categorizes them as “others”, preventing the viewer from visualizing them with members of the local population, with “us”. It confirms, enhances, and eternalizes their outgroup status. The immigrant cannot be considered as “one of us”, but as a different, “other” type or “species”. The highest percentage of photographs depicting immigrants together with other foreigners appears in Kathimerini (Center Right) (80.6%). The Spanish newspapers follow, but with a significant difference. The lowest percentage appears in Ta Nea (Center Left). Immigrants are depicted together with members of the local population mostly in El País (Center Left, 17%) and in Kathimerini (12.9%), whereas the lowest percentage of this type of photographs appears in Eleftherotypia (Left, 6.6%). In this case, the Spanish newspapers represent immigrants in what one could call an ideologically consistent way, if we accept that the closer to the Left a newspaper is, the more likely it is to use positive ways to represent immigrants. Such ideological consistency is not noted in the Greek press. It is noteworthy that in the majority of the photographs showing immigrants together with other foreigners and locals, other foreigners are the majority and locals are usually only one or two persons. As a result, the general impression is that of immigrants being, again, mostly among other foreigners. Furthermore, whenever immigrants are shown together with members of the local population, these members are, for the most part (45.5% in the Greek and 32.5 % in the Spanish newspapers), representatives of some authority. More specifically, immigrants are 63

Picturing Immigration

SOCIAL INTERACTION per newspaper 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% with foreigners

with locals

with foreigners and locals

unclear

KATHIMERINI

TANEA

ELEFTHEROTYPIA

EL PAIS

EL MUNDO

ABC

Figure 5: Social interaction of immigrants in the photographs of each newspaper.

shown with the police (25% in the Greek and 22.5% in the Spanish newspapers), rescue workers (30% in the Spanish but a mere 3.5% in the Greek newspapers), employees in legalization services (17% in the Greek but only 2.6% in the Spanish newspapers), and with politicians (10.7% in the Greek and 15% in the Spanish newspapers). In other words, the interaction of immigrants with the local population is basically limited to interaction with official representatives of the state, with whom the local population does not have contact or interaction in their everyday lives but only on special or emergency occasions. Such contact is outside the normality of the average citizen’s everyday life. The

Eleftherotypia, 03/01/2006

El Mundo, 02/04/2005

ABC, 06/05/2005

El Pais, 05/05/2005

Characteristic examples of social interaction with the local population in the Greek and Spanish press photographs. 64

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

depicted contact of immigrants with representatives of the state associates them with situations that are not part of the normal life of the local population, thus categorizing them as belonging outside the sphere of the normality of everyday life, in which “we”, the majority belong; it categorizes them as “others”. The Spanish newspapers, as a rule, do not approach immigrants beyond the boundaries of medium or social distance, that is, the distance that allows for safe social contact, and of long distance. The percentage of photographs that go closer than that is very low. Among the Greek newspapers, Ta Nea (Center Left) and Eleftherotypia (Left) show a clear preference for close distance, (37.7% and 38.6% respectively). Kathimerini (Center Right) is more in tune with the Spanish than with the Greek newspapers, showing a preference for long and medium distance. Among the Spanish newspapers, ABC is the one with the greatest percentage of close shots (23.6%) whereas El País contains no such photos. The opposite would normally be expected, given the political orientation of the two newspapers: ABC is a right-wing, monarchist, conservative newspaper, whereas El País leans more toward the Left and is considered a more “progressive” newspaper. As we can see, though, with regard to this particular element, the distance between camera and subject, it is the conservative newspaper that gets nearer the immigrants and not the liberal one.

CAMERA DISTANCE per country close-long medium-long

0.60% 1.05% 6.09% 3.68% 38.40%

long

29.47% 44.50%

medium

30% 9.10%

close close up

34.20% 1.21% 1.57% SPANISH

GREEK

Figure 6: Camera distance in the Greek and Spanish newspapers.

65

Picturing Immigration

CAMERA DISTANCE per newspaper 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% close up

close

medium

long

mediumlong

KATHIMERINI

TANEA

ELEFTHEROTYPIA

EL PAIS

EL MUNDO

ABC

closelong

Figure 7: Camera distance in each newspaper. Note on Figures 6 and 7: Photographs coded as “close up” are the ones where only the face is shown, “close shot” when the portrayed person appears from the chest and above, “medium shot” when the person is shown from the knees up, “long shot” when the whole of the body is shown. Since the sample contains a significant number of photographs depicting groups, two additional values are used for photos showing people in close or medium distance in the foreground and others in long distance in the background (“close-long” and “medium-long” respectively).

The symbolic social relationship that is established with a crowd, which, as presented above, is how immigrants are usually depicted, can only be an impersonal one. Preference for medium and long distance highlights the otherness of the depicted persons and makes them look distant and alien. This distinction between “us” and “them” is cultivated in a way that makes it difficult for viewers to be aware of it, since it is achieved through a visual element that easily goes unnoticed when browsing through a newspaper. It should be noted that this specific visual-framing technique is used mostly in the Spanish newspapers and in the Greek newspaper of the Center Right (Kathimerini). In the two Greek newspapers of the Left, the use of long camera distance is limited. These papers show a preference for close distance, which implies personal relation and intimacy. Again, as in the case of individual versus group photographs, ideology seems to have an effect in the way immigrants are depicted, but only in the Greek press. The newspapers that are affiliated with the Left and Center Left tend to approach immigrants, rather than “observe” them from afar, thus bringing them socially closer to the viewer. On the other hand, the newspaper of the Center Right maintains a social distance with the newcomers, keeping them symbolically away from the in-group, the majority population, and not allowing the 66

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

latter to approach them. The format and style of this newspaper resembles more that of the Spanish press than of the other two Greek newspapers and, as already mentioned, is closer to the professional standards of photojournalism. Taking that into account, we observe that the more “professional” the format and style of the newspaper, the longer the distance it maintains from immigrants, the social others, thereby adopting a less immigrant-friendly pattern of representation. It would be interesting to juxtapose these photographs with the ones taken by the American photographer Lewis Hine, who photographed immigrants on Ellis Island in New York Harbor at a time when they were arriving in great numbers. Contrary to the photographs examined in this book, Hine’s photographs approached immigrants, making them, somehow, “familiar”. Hine focused on the faces but in a way completely different to that of the passport-type photographs found in the Greek and to a lesser extent in the Spanish press, since his aim was to highlight their dignity with positive images that were characterized by immediacy and sincerity (Scarpelos, in press). Of course, Hine’s social photography and photojournalism are two entirely different genres. However, as in both cases we deal with images of immigrants, one can see the possibility of a different approach even within the limited boundaries of photojournalism, with slight alterations in simple framing choices, such as camera distance. And the mere fact that photographs taken from a closer distance do exist in the sample clearly shows that such depiction is possible but is not selected, at least not by the press that adopts a more professional photojournalistic approach. Besides interaction with the local population, symbolic contact between viewers/members of the majority and the depicted immigrants is also limited. In the majority of the photographs there is no symbolic communication between the portrayed immigrants and the viewers. This is the case for both countries. This absence of a symbolic communication results from the fact that the depicted faces do not look toward the viewers, toward “us”. Consequently, “we” can look at them undisturbed, we can observe and examine the “others” and appropriate them, not in order to create a symbolic relationship of equality but, as contemporary anthropologists–eugenicists who study a strange species different from us, in order to “familiarize” ourselves with it superficially, from a safe distance and with a sense of superiority.

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Picturing Immigration

COMMUNICATION WITH VIEWER per country (2)

COMMUNICATION WITH VIEWER per country

53.0% 45.2%

no

66.4%

no

63.10% 13.4% 17.8%

no, although face is visible

24.3% no and yes

yes and no

yes

4.8% 6.8%

14.20%

SPANISH

3.0% 1.5%

7.9%

GREEK

both

SPANISH 24.70%

GREEK

24.3% 14.2%

yes

0.0% unclear

0.0% unclear

1%

1.0%

Figure 8: Percentage of photographs where symbolic communication between the portrayed immigrants and the viewers is or is not established. Note: Deciding on whether there is communication with the viewer or not becomes problematic in the cases where more than one individual is portrayed and only a few of those individuals, or even just one, look toward the camera/viewer while the rest don’t. This problem was dealt with by the breakdown of the value “both” to “no and yes” when the majority does not look at the camera and only one or two individuals do, and “yes and no” in the opposite cases. The extra value “no, although face is visible” is part of the value “no”.

Among all six newspapers, the difference in percentage between the photographs that establish communication between the portrayed people and the viewers and those that do not is bigger for the newspaper Kathimerini (Center Right), where 74% of the photographs do not establish such a communication and 12.90% do, and smaller for the newspaper Ta Nea (Center Left), where the respective percentages are 68% and 23.5%. Again there is a distinction between Left and Right in the way the Greek press represents immigrants, as the Left seems friendlier. In the Spanish press, however, it is the more conservative newspaper that represents immigrants in a more positive way, as in the case of camera distance.

68

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

The symbolic surrender of immigrants to the power of the gaze of viewers/members of the majority confirms the relationship of social inequality that exists between immigrants, the newcomers, and the dominant majority. Furthermore, it constitutes a form of symbolic social control: we see them without being seen by them; we have them under our gaze, but they do not possess the same symbolic power over us; we escape their gaze, but they cannot escape ours.

COMMUNICATION WITH VIEWER per newspaper 80% 70% KATHIMERINI TANEA ELEFTHEROTYPIA EL PAIS EL MUNDO ABC

60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% unclear

both

yes

no

Figure 9: Communication (or lack of) with the viewer in each newspaper.

However, since cases where immigrants are depicted looking at us, the viewers, do exist, it is interesting to look back at them and learn something about who those immigrants are. Information such as nationality or origin is difficult to estimate and will be presented in the next chapter. Age group is clear – the majority are young, belonging to the most active age group. But the most evident and clear piece of information we can determine is gender. In the Greek newspapers, the female gender appears to look at the camera, and, therefore, the viewer in 36.7% of the photographs and the male gender in 47%. A particularly interesting finding is that in the majority of the pictures in which the female gender is looking toward the camera, establishing a symbolic relationship with the viewers, the portrayed people are children. More specifically, 72% of these photographs depict little girls and teenagers. In the photographs where the symbolic relationship is established with the male gender, the percentage of young boys and teenagers is less than half (40%). In the Spanish newspapers, the difference between the two genders is bigger: the symbolic relationship with the male gender is established in 67.9% of the photographs, whereas with the female gender in only 41.5%. Furthermore, the percentage of photographs establishing a symbolic relationship with children is much smaller, however, girls outnumber boys here as well (13.6% to 11%). 69

Picturing Immigration

Overall, in both groups of press photographs, a symbolic communication is established with grown men. Such a communication is not established with females, unless they are children. Since lack of a symbolic communication highlights the otherness of those who are depicted, these findings lead us to the conclusion that the female adult immigrant is perceived and represented as more “other” than the male. This comes in accordance with the generally accepted view that the subject of public speech or even the primary actor in society is still considered to be the male. Issues regarding gender will be analyzed in more detail in the next chapter. COMMUNICATION per gender 80% 67.90% 60% 47% 36.70%

40%

41.50%

GREEK SPANISH

20% 0%

women

men

Figure 10: Percentage of photographs establishing a symbolic communication with the viewers per gender of depicted immigrants.

As can been seen in Figure 11 below, the vast majority of the portrayed immigrants appear without any expression. This percentage is greater in the Greek (86.70%) than in the Spanish (78%) newspapers. On the other hand, the percentage of photographs depicting immigrants EXPRESSION per country

19.99% SPANISH GREEK

yes 12%

78.00% no

Figure 11: Percentage of photographs portraying immigrants with or without expression.

86.70%

70

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

who do show some signs of emotion reaches 20% in the Spanish newspapers but only 12% in the Greek ones. However, out of the whole of the Greek sample where there is some sort of expression, in 69.5% of the photographs this expression is positive. Negative expression appears in a percentage as low as 17.3%. There is, also, a small percentage of photographs in which the portrayed people express passion, effort, or something else that cannot be clearly characterized as negative or positive. The biggest number of photographs where positive feelings are expressed was found in the newspaper Ta Nea (Center Left). In the Spanish newspapers too, the photographs expressing positive feelings were more than the ones expressing negative feelings (48.8% and 30% respectively), but the difference was not as great as in the Greek papers. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the absence of expression renders the depicted person distant and less human compared to one who manifests feelings and is thus “humanized”. The viewer comes closer to someone who expresses feelings; he/she can identify and empathize with them. Expression of emotion functions as a “bridge” between the depicted person and the viewer, as a symbolic language with common and recognizable codes. Just the possibility to recognize functions as a confirmation that the depicted person possesses characteristics and attributes that are common with those of the viewer. Thus, a common ground is created as a basis for the establishment of a symbolic relationship of familiarity between the depicted person and the one who looks at him/her. On the other hand, an expressionless face remains unknown because it fails to offer decoding “keys”, such as recognizable expressions and manifestations of emotions. A person unknown and distant is perceived as alien, different, “other”. After all, neutral expression, especially in individual photographs, is reminiscent of another kind of depiction, that of mug shots. In such photographs, criminals or suspects appear

El Mundo, 10/02/2005

Eleftherotypia, 12/11/2005

El País, 08/02/2005

El Pais, 20/04/2005

El Mundo, 08/02/2005

Eleftherotypia, 12/12/2005

Characteristic examples of photographs of immigrants with or without expression. 71

Picturing Immigration

expressionless, directly opposite the viewer, facing the camera and thus the viewer, but with a neutral and “empty” gaze. Only the face is visible and the background is either neutral or does not appear at all, as the frame of the photo is so close around the face it excludes anything else from the photograph. Thus, the depicted person appears outside and away from anything that could grant it a conceptual frame, distant from any thematic environment that could give it meaning. In the Greek newspapers in particular, there was a plethora of photographs of immigrants making use of the above representational pattern, thus resembling mug shots (see, for example, images on p. 60). In this way, a mental link to criminality is implied. Immigrants are placed in the same conceptual frame as criminals. Criminal behavior deviates from average, normal behavior, and criminals constitute a deviant minority, unknown as to its psychological functions, alien to “us”, the average majority. Presenting immigrants in a way that is mentally reminiscent of such a minority has a dual function: on the one hand it stigmatizes immigrants by connecting them mentally to crime, even when they are presented as victims, and on the other it categorizes them as “others”, in the same way that criminals are “others” in relation to “us”, the average citizens. Lastly, several photographs, especially from the Greek sample, present immigrants without any thematic context and outside any frame of reference. This thematic category appears with a percentage of 18.9% in the Greek newspapers and constitutes the fifth most popular thematic category in this group of newspapers, while in the Spanish newspapers it reaches just 3%. Photographs in this thematic category are either individual photographs or photographs that are used more as graphics or decorative elements, accompanying charts, tables, and titles, rather than as supporting data. It seems that the role of the photographs in the Greek newspapers is more to “decorate” related graphs, tables, and titles rather than to visually document or complement a text, an article, or a report. This practice is more evident in the newspapers of the Left and the Center Left because of their format. The Center Right newspaper, as already mentioned, has a more conservative look and is closer to what is seen as a “traditional” or “serious” newspaper, where photographs follow the rules of professional photojournalism and function in a documentary way, as in the Spanish newspapers. The absence of a thematic context deprives viewers from the ability to conceptually anchor the depicted person and leaves a conceptual vacuum. No explanation is provided

Ta Nea, 09/11/2005

Characteristic examples from the Greek newspapers where immigrants appear out of context.

Ta Nea, 09/11/2005

72

Eleftherotypia, 12/11/2005

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

as to the presence, expression (whenever it exists), movement (wherever it exists), etc. No decoding keys of what is depicted are provided, no complete and precise conceptual image of immigrants is given. Consequently, they appear with a conceptual question mark and the resulting difficulty to decode them renders them unknown, distant, others. In this case, the treatment of immigrants seems contrary to the ideological stigma of the newspapers in question. Traditionally, one would expect the more conservative newspaper to treat immigrants in a more conservative way, emphasizing their “otherness” by including more photographs where they are presented out of any context. However, it is the newspapers of the Left that do this, due to their less professional format and more popular style, which leads to the use of images as illustrations rather than as means of documentation.

3.2 Frame Β: The Immigrant as “Threat” As in the previous frame, depiction in groups is one of the main techniques of framing immigrants as a threat, particularly when these groups are presented in a political context. Other techniques that formulate this frame are overvisuality of the male gender, particularly in group photographs, and overvisuality of the black race. Lastly, the emphasis on the immigrants’ “otherness”, as explained in the previous chapter, functions also as a mechanism that frames immigrants as a threat. As has already been pointed out in the previous chapter, depiction of immigrants in groups and preference in presenting them as an amorphous and impersonal mass constitutes a common denominator in the majority of the photographs, regardless of thematic context. This pattern is also the most fundamental device of framing immigrants as a “threat”. In public discourse, the arrival of immigrants is commonly described with expressions such as “avalanche” or “wave” and public opinion perceives their presence as an “invasion” to the country. Immigrants are described and perceived as a “threat” and presenting a mass of people is a way to visualize this threat. A mass, a mob, a crowd has power. Since the first days of our existence, humans formed groups in order to ensure survival. There are more chances of survival for a group than for each individual separately. Throughout the history of humanity, people continued to form groups in order to achieve important goals. From territorial claims to revolutions, the greatest changes in history were caused or accomplished by groups: armies, crowds, masses. Even smaller-scale goals are more likely to be reached if pursued by a group rather than an individual, e.g. labor unions, citizens groups, etc. A group is a considerable force. A group, or even worse, a mass of people who do not belong to “us” causes anxiety and uneasiness, activating the instinct of defense. Many of the group photographs in the sample depict immigrants in contact with politicians, demonstrating or in other contexts implying political claims (e.g. hunger strikers asking for legalization). The thematic category “politics” comes seventh in appearance frequency, with 10.3% in the Spanish and 7.3% in the Greek newspapers. As the photographs were 73

Picturing Immigration

considered and codified, the ones depicting immigrants in some form of political activity (from demonstrations to hunger strikes) and the ones portraying immigrants in contact with politicians (as long as there is no other prevailing element in the picture that could justify its classification into a different thematic category) were classified as being politics related. In this category, 80% of the Greek photographs portray immigrants demonstrating, usually in crowds. The percentage in the Spanish newspapers is also high, although lower than in the Greek newspapers (52%). There are also photographs portraying immigrants with politicians. In the Spanish newspapers, Prime Minister J. L. Zapatero and the leader of the opposition M. Rajoy appear, as well as J. Caldera, the Minister of Employment and Social Issues, responsible for the regularization program. In the Greek photos the thenleader of Synaspismos (a left-wing party), A. Alavanos, appears. The image of the “others” demonstrating can be considered potentially threatening as it implies that this mass is so big that it can request, claim, or even demand something from “us”. The mass is no longer in the margin; it is present in the public sphere and participates in public discourse. Its voice is heard and perhaps it is heard louder than we would like, perhaps it surpasses the point up to which we feel safe about “our” own benefits and privileges.

Eleftherotypia, 13/11/2005 and Kathimerini, 31/12/2005-1/1/2006

El País, 14/03/2005

El Mundo, 08/05/2005

One could argue that this is the only way to depict people putting forward claims, requests or demands. However, as illustrated by the example below, other ways to depict this theme do exist but are not preferred. Selection of one theme over another influences the way viewers perceive events (Mendelson, 2006) and is a known framing technique (Scheufele, 1999).

El Mundo, 05/04/2005 («Papers for everyone»)

El País, 05/04/2005 (Hunger strike)

74

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

In the photographs depicting immigrants in contact with politicians, there seems to be a visual emphasis on the politician, particularly in the Spanish press. The politician is thus the visual focus, the visual news. As immigrants are visually attached to politicians, themselves and their issues are taken from the margin and placed in the centre of public sphere and public concerns. Such contact implies the existence of the power to participate in the public sphere and even to achieve a meeting with politicians. In both cases there exists the possibility to present claims. A minority group with requests or claims constitutes a potential threat for the social power of the dominant majority, since it represents a potential conflict of interests. This appears particularly threatening in societies already challenged by unemployment, flexible employment relationships, economic stagnation, and rising social insecurity, as is the case for the two Southern European societies in question.

ABC, 09/03/2005 (the Leader of the Opposition in Spain, M. Rajoy)

El Mundo, 26/05/2005 (the Spanish Prime Minister J.L. Zapatero)

Eleftherotypia, 18/12/2005 (Meeting of immigrants with A. Alavanos and A. Tsipras of Synaspismos)

Eleftherotypia, 18/12/2005 (Meeting of immigrants with A. Alavanos of Synaspismos)

The photographs studied here, particularly group photographs, depict male immigrants in a percentage impressively disproportional to the real analogy of male–female immigrants. This applies to all the newspapers, regardless of country and political orientation, with a percentage ranging from 58.2% (El Mundo – Center Right) to 78.3% (Eleftherotypia – Left). The percentage of photographs portraying women ranges from 12.9% (Kathimerini – Center Right) to 19.1% (El País – Center Left). As seen in Figure 13, the closer to the Left a newspaper is, the larger the number of photographs with female immigrants it contains. The Left seems to adopt a friendlier attitude toward female immigrants in both countries. The gap between the photographs portraying men and those portraying women is bigger in the Greek (59.4 points) than in the Spanish (43.9 points) newspapers. There are also some photographs portraying both genders, but there, again, males are the majority; the female presence is limited to only one or two individuals per photograph. 75

Picturing Immigration

GENDER per country

8.50%

unclear

2.10%

11.50%

male + female

SPANISH GREEK

10.00%

17.60%

female

14.20%

61.50% male

73.60%

Figure 12: Gender distribution in immigrant photographs in the Greek and Spanish newspapers.

GENDER per newspaper 11% 10%

unclear

male + female

female

male

2% 2% 0% 6%

11% 11% 13%

ABC EL MUNDO

20% 15% 16%

EL PAIS ELEFTHEROTYPIA TANEA KATHIMERINI

16% 19% 19% 17% 15% 13% 63% 58% 66%

78%

70% 65%

Figure 13: Gender distribution in immigrant photographs in each newspaper.

76

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

Taking into account that the actual percentage of women among the immigrant populations in both countries is almost the same as that of men (45%), the limited visualization of immigrant women in the press of both countries is striking. A possible explanation for that could be the nature of their employment, which mostly takes place indoors, since immigrant women are typically employed in domestic-type work and, consequently, their public presence is limited. Also, the access of photojournalists to houses and private property, where immigrant women are usually active, is, for practical reasons, more limited and difficult to acquire than is access to public areas, where immigrant men are active. It is interesting at this point to look at the thematic contexts in which women appear. In the Spanish newspapers, women appear (together with men or other women) mainly in the thematic category “regularization” (34%), and to a lesser extent in “social life” (16%) and “work” (11.3%). In the Greek newspapers, they appear primarily in the category “no context” (44%), and then in “social life” (21.9%) and “family” (10%). What the two countries have in common is that quite often women appear in aspects of the immigrants’ social life, since this category comes second in appearance frequency in both countries.

THEMATIC CATEGORIES WITH WOMEN (+ WOMEN AND MEN) 43.9% 34.0%

GREEK SPANISH

21.9% 15.9%

ar

4.5% 2.4%

cle

0%

cri me reg ula riza tio n

liti cs po

9.0% 6.8% 7.3%

un

2.4% 2.4%

0%

res ide nce

ily fam

ife soc ial l

iva

wo rk

2.2%

l

0%

9.0% 4.8%

er

6.8%

2.2%

oth

9.7%

4.8%

no con tex t

11.3%

arr

50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Figure 14: Thematic categories in which women appear exclusively or with men.

77

Picturing Immigration

El País, 20/05/2005

El Mundo and El Pais, 24/04/2005

ABC, 12/03/2005

Eleftherotypia, 13/11/2005.

Ta Nea, 08/11/2005

Characteristic examples from the thematic category “social life”.

If we leave out the photographs where both genders appear and examine the photographs where only women are portrayed, the percentages and consequently the order in appearance frequency change slightly. In the Greek newspapers, the thematic categories in which only women appear are still “no context” (46.1%) and “social life” (19.2%), but “family” is replaced with “other” (11.5%). In the Spanish newspapers “regularization” (19%) comes first again, but with a lower percentage,

THEMATIC CATEGORIES WITH WOMEN ONLY 50% 41.6%

12.9% 9.6% 6.8%

11.5%

9.6% 6.4%

ar cle un

oth

er

0%

no con tex t

me reg ula riza tio n

cri

liti

3.8% 0%

cs

0%

po

res ide nce

ily fam

ife al l soc i

wo rk

l

3.8% 0%

0% 0%

9.6%

9.6%

7.6% 6.4%

7.6%

iva

GREEK SPANISH

19.3%

19.2% 16.1%

arr

45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0%

Figure 15: Thematic categories in which only women appear. 78

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

while “work” (16.1%) and “social life” (12.9%) change order in the frequency with which they appear. It becomes evident that, once more, women appear frequently in the thematic context “social life” in both countries. As can be seen in the examples above, many of these photographs depict children. Taking into account that portrayal of immigrants out of any thematic context constitutes a framing mechanism of otherness, it becomes obvious that according to the Greek newspapers, women immigrants are more “other” than men. On the other hand, in the Spanish sample, women receive a rather friendlier treatment as they are often depicted in activities that are positive (becoming part of the receiving society through regularization), useful (work), and “normal” (social life). Combining the emphasis on groups or masses and the overvisuality of men, what these photographs imply is that immigrants in Greece and Spain are a mass of men. It would be interesting to replace men with women, particularly in group photographs. In the photographs of the sample women appear mostly in non-threatening or “safe” thematic contexts. This can be attributed on the one hand to the fact that women are traditionally represented in the media in passive roles and engaged in non-violent, unthreatening activities, and on the other hand to the fact that the actual rate of physically violent behavior is lower for women than for men. Violent behavior is traditionally considered a male characteristic. Violence is connected to physical strength and physical strength is traditionally a male quality. Therefore, the male is perceived as more threatening than the female in societies that for centuries have been using physical strength as a criterion for the distribution of power between genders, granting more power to the physically stronger. Thus, a mass of male immigrants appears as more threatening than a mass of female immigrants would, and it visualizes more effectively the feeling of threat. In the Spanish newspapers there exists one more element which contributes to the visual framing of immigrants as threat: it is mostly black males that appear in the photographs, even though black immigrants do not constitute the majority of immigrants in Spain. Figure 16 shows the frequency of appearance of immigrants according to estimated origin or nationality. The determination of the nationality, and not just the race of the portrayed people, proved to be a challenge since in the vast majority of cases it was not clearly stated. This problem was dealt with in two ways: first, with the use of values referring to origin and second, with the use of the context (caption, title, theme, etc.) wherever this was possible, for the determination of the nationality. A characteristic example is offered by the photographs of Pakistani immigrants appearing in Greek newspaper articles with regard to accusations of their kidnapping by the British secret services. As it has already been mentioned, this issue became a major scandal at the time, and therefore, although the nationality may not have been clear from the photographs, their presence on pages dominated by this particular issue signifies their nationality even for the viewer who is not interested in its verification. The determination of origin was mainly based on broad geographical definitions. Thus, the following values were used: “African”, “Caucasian”, “East Asian”, “South Asian”, “North African”, “Muslim”, “Latin American”, and “Middle Eastern”. The value “Muslim” was used 79

Picturing Immigration

for a significant number of cases where the dominant impression is a religious one and no certain conclusions can be drawn with regard to race or nationality. In both countries there is an interesting percentage of photographs portraying Muslims, whose nationality is indeterminable (6.7% in the Spanish newspapers, 6.3% in the Greek ones), but this issue will be dealt with in the next chapter. Taking into account the migratory influx in both Greece and Spain, the aforementioned values correspond to nationalities entering the two countries and residing in them. The value “African” refers to people belonging to the black race, mainly those coming from sub-Saharan African countries. The value “Caucasian” refers to people of the white race, among them Balkan people, especially Albanians, East Europeans, and Russians. The value “East Asian” refers to the Chinese, “South Asian” to Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian people, and the value “North African” to Moroccans and Algerians. The value “Latin American” refers, of course, to people of the Caucasian race as well, but, since it was noted that their photographs are accompanied by captions mentioning their nationality or name (from which the nationality can be concluded), the use of the value “Latin American” was considered appropriate. Some other values were also used, namely “mixed” when the photographs portray groups of people with more than one nationality, “unclear” when the nationality or origin cannot be estimated, and “other” when the nationality cannot be classified into any of the aforementioned values. The nationality is clearly stated in the cases where it can safely be concluded from the photograph’s context (caption, title, etc.), otherwise it is inferred from the features of the depicted people. Nevertheless, in most cases the determination of nationality or origin proved to be particularly difficult, and, therefore, it is presented with reservation and with the reminder that in a great number of cases, nationality or origin are estimated. As shown in Figure 16, Caucasians appear in the Greek newspapers more often than any other race, with a percentage of 26.8%, and Africans appear with a similar percentage of 25.6% in the Spanish ones. Second in appearance frequency in the Greek newspapers come immigrants from South Asia, namely Pakistanis (16.8%), whereas in the Spanish newspapers it is people coming from Latin America (12.8%) and North Africa (12.1%). Because of the difficulty in determining origin, a great percentage of photographs falls into the category “unclear” (20.5% in the Greek and 18.9% in the Spanish newspapers). We can see that the frequency with which Caucasians appear in the Greek newspapers reflects the reality of immigrant populations in the country, since, as it has already been mentioned in Chapter 2, the majority of immigrants comes from the Balkans, and mostly from Albania (57%). On the other hand, the visual representation in the Greek newspapers of people coming from South Asia, Pakistanis in particular, is disproportionate to their actual presence in the country. The high percentage they have in the photographs of the Greek newspapers is because of Eleftherotypia’s (Left) frequent references to the issue of the kidnapping of Pakistanis (71.8% of the relevant photographs were found in Eleftherotypia), an issue that does not receive the same emphasis from the other two newspapers. In the Greek newspapers, there is also a relatively high percentage of black people, which does not reflect reality since their actual population in the country is rather small. 80

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

ORIGIN per country 30% 25% 20% GREEK SPANISH

15% 10% 5%

r he Ot

ar

xed

cle Un

Afr rth

Mi

n ica

can eri No

Am in Lat

uth

As ian

slim So

Mu

tA sia n Mi dd le E ast ern

sia uca Ca

Afr ic

Eas

n

0%

an

0%

7.6%

Figure 16: Origin of immigrants in the photographs of the Greek and Spanish newspapers.

In the Spanish newspapers the most frequently appearing immigrant population is the Africans, although they are not the largest immigrant group in the country. This group is the Moroccans, coming from North Africa, who, however, are third in appearance frequency in the sample photographs, after Latin Americans, who in reality are fewer than the Moroccans. The high frequency of photographs showing black immigrants is due first of all to the fact that the theme of a large number of photographs is the arrival of immigrants, especially their arrival by sea. This issue figures prominently in the news agenda of the Spanish media, and it is a source of serious concern for the government and Spanish society in general. A great number of immigrants arrive from Africa every year on Spanish shores, after a long and hazardous journey in the Atlantic Ocean or after crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in plain boats (pateras in Spanish), among them many women with babies or small children. Deaths from drowning during the journey are frequent. The exact number of dead bodies washed ashore each year on the Spanish coasts is hard to estimate since the numbers given by the authorities and the ones given by non-governmental organizations vary significantly, with the latter being much higher. For example, according to the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, 44 bodies washed ashore in 2000, while other sources estimate the number to be 800 and some NGOs talk about 1000 or 2000 bodies (Téllez, 2001). On the other hand, the fact that large numbers of immigrants actually make it to the Spanish inland led the government to seek help from the European Union in order to cope with the situation. 81

Picturing Immigration

The Spanish newspapers, unlike the Greek ones, put a great deal of visual emphasis on the arrival of immigrants in their country and this theme appears with high frequency in the photographs in the Spanish newspapers. Emphasis on this topic is further enhanced through the use of large photographs. By far the dominant theme of the large photographs in the Spanish newspapers is that of arrival of immigrants (35.8%). When depicting the arrival of immigrants, particularly the arrival by sea, it is inevitable to depict black people, since immigrants arriving in this way are mostly those from sub-Saharan African countries. However, the very choice of this theme performs its function as a framing device in the press of a country whose native population is white. Furthermore, it is predominantly men who are depicted in the theme of arrival. The absence or limited presence of women in this thematic category is striking, as shown in Figures 14 and 15. Thus, immigrants are framed as a crowd of black men arriving in the country. The visual signification of depicting crowds of men and how this contributes to the framing of immigrants as a threat was analyzed previously. A similar function is achieved through the overvisuality of black immigrants. Traditionally, black people signify the “different”, even the “opposite” for whites. Especially for the white populations of Southern Europe, black people are to a great extent something unknown, since Southern Europeans have no historical experience of symbiosis, even one that is problematic, with black people. The absence of such a past could function positively, leaving space for the development of a symbiotic relationship on “blank paper”. But contrary to that, black people constitute for the whites of Southern Europe something “dark” and unknown. For the white majority of Spain, they symbolize something even more frightening:

El País, 07/02/2005

El País, 06/02/2005

ABC, 03/05/2005

El Mundo, 03/02/2005

El Mundo, 03/05/2005

Characteristic examples of photographs in the thematic category “arrival”. 82

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

the return of the Moors from Africa. As mentioned in Chapter 2, the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula constitutes an important chapter in Spanish history that ended with the glorious reconquest of Spain by the Catholic monarchs, whose successful campaign is seen as the return of Spain to Spaniards, its rightful “owners”. In recent years, the arrival of immigrants from Africa to Spain is often referred to in public discourse as the return of the Moors. Obviously, the idea of this return is not welcomed. Finally, the visual framing of immigrants as “others”, which was analyzed in the previous chapter, functions itself as a device framing them also as a “threat”. The “other”, the different, is commonly perceived as threatening, as something that does not belong to the in-group and cannot be integrated and become part of it. The “other” is perceived as hostile. The ancient instinct of survival commands the expulsion or even extermination of the “other” in order to guarantee the continuation of the normal functioning of the team, its survival and its predominance. It is easily understood that otherness is perceived as even more threatening when the members of the in-group feel unsure about their own position, about their own present and future. These issues however, will be dealt with in more detail in Chapter 5.

3.3 Themes This chapter gives an overview of the thematic context in which immigrants appear. Some of the issues that were dealt with in detail in the previous chapters will only be mentioned briefly here. The thematic context in which the immigrants appear is crucial for the signification of each photograph as well as for the viewers’ perception of the depicted people. The messages conveyed are extremely powerful since they associate the portrayed people with specific situations and activities. The thematic contexts that were found are: “arrival”, “work”, “social life”, “family”, “residence”, “politics”, “crime”, “regularization”, “no context”, “other”, and “unclear”. As it appears, there is significant differentiation with regard to the thematic context in which immigrants are depicted in the two countries. The dominant thematic category in the Greek newspapers is “crime” (30.5% to 1.2% in the Spanish papers) and in the Spanish ones “regularization” (31.7% to 8.4% in the Greek papers). These are followed by “no context” and “social life” in the Greek newspapers and “work” and “arrival” in the Spanish ones. First in appearance frequency, with the highest percentage among all thematic categories, is the theme of “regularization”, with a percentage of 31.7% in the Spanish newspapers. In the Greek newspapers, on the other hand, it only comes fourth with a percentage of 8.4%. Taking into account that the sample was collected during the regularization programs in the two countries, one would expect this thematic category to dominate press photographs in both Greece and Spain. This, however, is true only for the photographs from the Spanish newspapers. The Greek newspapers do not place a visual emphasis on the regularization program. In both countries, public opinion is mostly negative toward illegal immigration, that is, toward immigrants who enter the country and reside there in illegal status. This 83

Picturing Immigration

THEME per country arrival

21.90%

3.10%

23.10%

work

3.60% 13.40%

social life

17.30% 2.40% 3.10% 2.40% 3.10%

family residence

SPANISH GREEK

10.30%

politics

7.30% 1.20%

crime

30.50% 31.70%

regularization

8.40% 3%

no context

18.90%

5.40% 3.10% 1.20% 1%

other unclear 0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

Figure 17: Thematic context in which immigrants are depicted in the Greek and Spanish newspapers.

El País, 09/02/2005

Eleftherotypia, 06/11/2005

ABC, 07/05/2005

Characteristic examples of photographs from the thematic category “regularization”. 84

El País, 08/02/2005

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

.

status connects immigrants in the minds of many Spaniards and Greeks to general illegality, including crime. Taking this into account, the presentation of images of immigrants “crossing the river” toward legality, toward becoming “normal citizens”, as encouraged by the state, puts them in a positive frame. This positive frame, however, is found mainly in the Spanish newspapers. The Greek ones contain very few such images. Furthermore, as has been pointed out previously, although the Greek newspapers do use photographs showing lines of immigrants, there are usually no elements in these images to “anchor” them, in terms of meaning, to the legalization issue, and there are no related captions either. The emphasis is on the crowd and, quite often, these photographs not only accompany articles that are completely unrelated to the issue of regularization, they are themselves accompanied by captions that do not describe them but, instead, refer to other immigration-related issues. In some cases the theme can be concluded from the context. Moreover, no particular emphasis is put on this issue through the use of large photographs in either of the two countries. In the Greek newspapers, in particular, no large-sized photographs were found in this thematic category, whereas in the Spanish ones the percentage of large photographs related thematically to the regularization program comes up to only 15%. Second comes the thematic category “crime”, with a percentage of 30.5% in the Greek newspapers, whereas in the Spanish ones it only comes ninth with just 1.2%. However, the high percentage in the Greek newspapers is mainly due to Eleftherotypia’s (Left) repeated references to the issue of the kidnapping of Pakistani immigrants by the British secret services. This issue, involving Pakistani immigrants as victims, was a major scandal at the time in Greece and had political implications. Thus, in more than half of the photographs in the “crime” category (63.7%) immigrants are portrayed as victims of criminal activities and not as perpetrators (this percentage comes up to 69.7% in Eleftherotypia). If we exclude from the sample the Eleftherotypia photographs of this category, the percentage for the Greek newspapers is much lower (17.8% instead of 30.5%) and, thus, the category “crime” comes only sixth in appearance frequency in the whole sample. In the Spanish newspapers, only two photographs were found in this thematic category (in the newspapers El País and El Mundo). The low percentage of photographs portraying immigrants in a thematic context related to crime is the reason why this element was not considered one of the framing

Eleftherotypia, 04/01/2006

Eleftherotypia, 30/10/2005

El País, 09/04/2006

Characteristic examples of photographs from the thematic category “crime”. 85

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techniques of “otherness”, connecting immigrants with situations that are placed outside the normality of the average citizen’s life. It is noteworthy that, contrary to the early 1990s, when immigrants dominated crime reports as perpetrators of criminal activities, in these photographs they are portrayed as victims. When the first immigrants started arriving in the countries of Southern Europe in the early 1990s, the association between immigration and criminality was very common, as was the perception of immigrants as criminals. Immigrants were often blamed for an increase in crime rates and the news was full of such reports. It seems that this trend has changed, at least as far as the visual discourse of the media is concerned, so that immigrants are now mostly portrayed as victims. Even so, the practice of connecting immigrants with crime, with problematic situations far removed from the normality of the average citizen’s life, is still very much present. The next thematic category is “work”, with a percentage of 23.1% in the Spanish newspapers and only 3.6% in the Greek ones. As already mentioned, this is also one of the main thematic contexts in which women often appear in the Spanish press. The portrayal of immigrants in a work context is very close to reality, since work is the main reason for migrating. Immigrants come to a foreign country looking for work, therefore, their portrayal in such an environment is a reflection of the reality, with regard to the thematic context in which they appear. Furthermore, the portrayal in this thematic context is assessed as positive because it associates immigration with an activity that is an essential element of any citizen’s everyday life, thus, connecting immigrants with the normality of life.

Eleftherotypia, 22/12/2005

EL Mundo, 15/05/2005

ABC, 22/05/2005

El País, 06/02/2005

86

Characteristic examples of photographs from the thematic category “work”.

The Visual Representation of Immigrants

The thematic category “arrival” comes fourth, with a small difference from the previous one, with a percentage of 21.9% in the Spanish newspapers. This issue however, was dealt with in the previous chapter, as was the practice, on the part of the Greek newspapers mostly, to depict immigrants in the thematic category that comes next, that of “no context”. Next comes the thematic category “social life”. Here, the differentiation between the percentages in the two countries is not as great as in the previous categories: 18.9% of the Greek photographs and 13.4% of the Spanish ones fall into this category, portraying immigrants in aspects of their social lives. This category also includes photographs in which immigrants appear in aspects of their personal lives. As seen in the previous chapter, this is the thematic context in which the female presence is quite frequent in both countries. Another point of interest is that 36.3% of the photographs from the Greek newspapers and 13.6% from the Spanish ones are related to the immigrants’ religious life, such as portraying Muslim men praying in a mosque or elsewhere. In these photographs, immigrants are shown again in groups and crowds. The visual signification of crowds of foreign (“other”) men as threatening has already been analyzed. For the two societies in question, both of which are characterized by religious and cultural homogeneity to a great degree and by a strong cultural identity that includes the Christian religion as a defining and distinguishing attribute, the addition of the Muslim element to images of crowds of foreign men gives these images a further dimension. Threatening otherness is enhanced by the additional element of a different religion, all the more because this is the religion of the past foreign occupiers (Ottoman Turks and Moors), whose descendants are still perceived as threatening the sovereignty of the two countries (as was mentioned in Chapter 2 and will be further explained in Chapter 4). Furthermore, one cannot disregard the negative feelings generated toward the Muslim element in the whole Western world after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Spain, in particular, is one of the countries that experienced a terrorist attack by fundamentalist Muslims only a year before the photographs studied here were published.

Eleftherotypia, 04/11/2005, 13/11/2005, 02/03/2005

El Pais, 26/04/2005

Eleftherotypia, 04/04/2006, Kathimerini, 16/04/2006

Characteristic examples from the category “social life” (religion).

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Photographs from the category “residence”.

Eleftherotypia, 30/10/2005

El Mundo, 08/02/2005

Eleftherotypia, 14/11/2005

ABC, 11/03/2005

Seventh in overall appearance frequency comes the thematic category “politics”, with 10.3% in the Spanish and 7.3% in the Greek newspapers. Since this theme was dealt with in detail earlier, it will not be analyzed further here. The appearance frequency of the thematic contexts “residence” and “family” is much lower compared to the previous theme. More specifically only 3.1% of the photographs found in the Greek newspapers and 2.4% found in the Spanish ones contain such images. The photographs that were entered into the category “residence” depict immigrants in their place of residence or outside it. The number of such photographs found in all the newspapers is small and in El País (Center Left), in particular, no such photograph was found. Photographs from the category “family” portray immigrants with their family or members of it, provided there are no other prevailing elements in the picture that could justify its

Ta Nea, 08/12/2005

Ta Nea, 24/03/2006

El Mundo, 11/02/2005

Photographs from the category “family”. 88

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classification into a different category. As we can see, the photographs in this thematic category portray immigrants mostly in their place of residence. Thus, the codification of the photographs with regard to the last two thematic categories was particularly difficult. In the end, the photographs that were coded into the category “family” were the ones whose composition emphasizes family ties. Only Kathimerini (Center Right) contained no photographs that fall into this thematic category. The low appearance frequency of the thematic contexts “residence” and “family” in both groups of newspapers is, to some degree, expected, since the photographs that appear in newspapers in general and in serious newspapers of opinion like the ones in the sample, in particular, are primarily photographs from the public domain. Perhaps there would have been more photographs in the thematic categories “residence” and “family” if the sample had been taken from tabloids, where the emphasis is more on “human interest” stories and the focus on the private, personal domain. However, as noted previously in other cases (for example, camera distance, female presence, theme of “arrival”, etc.), the mere fact that such images do exist in the sample highlights the issue of selection as was analyzed in Chapter 1. The fact that certain aspects of the life of the immigrants are emphasized visually and others are obscured is a result of journalistic choice. Looking at how each newspaper treated the various issues mentioned in this book illustrates that there can be different choices in representing a subject or a social group.

THEME per newspaper 45% 40% 35% KATHIMERINI TANEA ELEFTHEROTYPIA EL PAIS EL MUNDO ABC

30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

ar cle un

er oth

tio n no con tex t

e

riza

cri m reg

ula

e

cs liti po

ily

nc ide res

fam

ife al l soc i

wo rk

arr

iva

l

0%

Figure 18: The thematic context of immigrant photographs in each newspaper. 89

Picturing Immigration

At this point, it is relevant to look at the appearance frequency in each newspaper of the above-mentioned thematic contexts, particularly the ones that appear more often in each country. Regarding the theme of “regularization”, it looks like the closer to the right side of the political spectrum a newspaper is placed, the more relevant images it contains. This theme appeared with the highest frequency in the Spanish press, but not very often in the Greek. However, the Greek newspaper of the Center Right (Kathimerini) is more aligned to the conservative Spanish newspapers than the other two Greek papers of the Left and Center Left. As seen before, this is not the only case where this happens. The second most frequently encountered thematic context in the Spanish press is “work”, where El País makes a positive difference by including a much greater number of photographs than the other two Spanish papers. Taking into account that in the Greek press, too, the newspapers of the Left are the only ones that contain such images, we see that contrary to the previous case, the closer to the Left the newspaper is, the more photographs in this theme it contains and this applies to both countries. “Arrival” is another theme where the conservative and more professional-looking Greek newspaper is more in tune with the Spanish press than with the other two Greek newspapers. In the Spanish press more photographs in this theme are found the closer we move toward the Left, which seems to be ideologically the opposite of what would be expected, taking into account the framing effect of this theme that was presented earlier. The difference is not so great so as to be of real significance. However, one could still argue that this is so because such images are meant to evoke feelings of compassion for the drama of immigrants. But even if this is the intention, the framing effect is quite different. In the Greek press, a similar case is that of the thematic context of “crime”, which comes first in appearance frequency due to Eleftherotypia’s (Left) emphasis on the kidnappings of the Pakistanis by the British secret services. The newspaper of the Center Left (Ta Nea) also contains a rather high number of such photographs, but the newspaper of the Center Right (Kathimerini, affiliated with the then-government, which was accused of being involved in the scandal) contains very few, presumably because it was not in the interest of its political allies to emphasize on this issue. However, as was explained earlier, even if the intention of newspapers of the Left, and especially Eleftherotypia, was to draw attention to the immigrants as victims (which they were), they do not fail to associate them with crime and mentally place them outside the normality of life, which is the realm of the average citizen. A similarly negative framing effect occurs with the practice of presenting immigrants out of any context, a practice adopted by the Greek newspapers of the Left, because of their format and style. Ideological consistency can be argued to exist in the case of “social life”, as the newspapers of the Left, and especially that of Center Left (Ta Nea) contain more photographs of this immigrant-friendly theme. However, with the exception of Ta Nea, the difference is not as great as to be of real significance.

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Chapter 4 Analysis

4.1 Frames and Schemata

A

s mentioned in Chapter 1, frames do not exist nor do they function independently of their recipients. On the contrary, their function and effectiveness in transmitting messages and in presenting reality in a specific manner lies in the activation of pre-existing cognitive schemata in the minds of audience members (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996). Furthermore, they constitute cultural elements so deeply rooted in the culture in which they are created, that they usually go unnoticed, they seem natural and undisputable (Gamson, 1995). As a result, the wide audience remains largely unaware of the process of social construction that takes place through these frames (Gamson, et al., 1992). This process escapes conscious, critical evaluation since it operates in the realm of the unconscious. Precisely because they function in the sphere of the unconscious, frames constitute extremely effective mechanisms for the social construction of reality. The effectiveness of frames is enhanced when they are “strong”, that is, when they come from credible sources, such as newspapers, when they are in accordance with social consensus and when they do not contradict strongly held beliefs (Chong & Druckman, 2007). Furthermore, a frame is more effective when it is “loud”, that is when it is repeated often. As it is generally accepted, the high frequency of activation of a cognitive schema or of some schemata renders them more accessible, as they remain in the front part of our mental archive and are readily re-activated at any moment. Considering that judgments on various issues do not stem from our entire cognitive armory but are formed by knowledge that comes to mind at a given moment (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987), it becomes evident that the cognitive schemata that are more accessible due to their frequent activation play a crucial role in the opinion-formation process. Emphasis given by the media on certain frames through their frequent repetition increases the degree of accessibility of certain ideas connected to them and influences the formation of criteria for future judgments regarding an issue. The repeated visual framing of immigrants as “others” and as “threat” that is carried out by the Greek and Spanish press on the one hand reflects and on the other activates preexisting cognitive schemata that are common in the mental grid of the two societies. As Lester Roushanzamir (2004) notes, a critical analysis of media content is not concerned with content per se, but rather with the evidence or indication of social practices that it provides. In other words, media content constitutes a cultural product reflecting perceptions, beliefs, and norms of the culture and society in which it appears, irrespective of its real impact on the formation of public opinion. 93

Picturing Immigration

The frames that are used and repeated constitute a coded language understood by the members of a society because they correspond to pre-existing cognitive schemata that are found in the unconscious as they emanate from historical memories and cultural roots, from the past as well as from the future potential and expectations of a society. The societies of Greece and Spain, as extensively described in Chapter 2, share many common characteristics as to their past, present, and expected future, and these are reflected in the identified visual frames. First of all, they are both characterized by a past association with emigration of long duration and great historical significance, which serves to characterize them as “traditional emigration countries”. Particularly in the context of the European family, Greeks and Spaniards (together with Italians and Portuguese) were the typical immigrants, the poor relatives, always a few steps behind the rich relatives of the North. For many years, Greeks and Spaniards were the “others” in the societies in which they emigrated, the “others” of the European family. Even in the interior of these countries, a great part of their population experienced “otherness” in the context of internal migration. Immigrants arriving in recent years in Greece and Spain constitute the alter ego of these populations as they remind them of their own, relatively recent, past of poverty and immigration. The economic affluence to which Greeks and Spaniards quickly became accustomed after entering the EU (then the EEC), is a rather recent aspect of these societies. The memories of poverty are still fresh and they remain active through reminders in the whole social, cultural, and even family environment. A representative example of such reminders is the frequent broadcast of black-and-white films of the 1950s and 1960s, which constitute a fundamental element of contemporary culture in the two countries and reconfirm the social and economic changes the two countries have experienced. A reconfirmation that becomes clear through the inevitable contrast of the present to the past that is presented in these films. A past that remains alive and functions as a constant reminder of the fact that this economic affluence is recent and cannot be taken for granted. The underlying insecurity regarding the newly acquired as well as precarious economic prosperity is intensified by the presence of immigrants; it is under threat by the invasion of the poverty stricken. Moschopoulou (2005) observes that as public opinion comes in contact with the reality of the uncontrolled influx of poor immigrants, it wishes to shield its “superiority” from those who “threaten to downgrade the cultural and educational level of the country, to corrupt its national homogeneity, deprive its citizens of jobs” (pp. 183–84). In other words, the receiving society reacts defensively fearing the degradation of its living standards and the return to a situation from which it only recently managed to escape. The frames used to represent immigrants compose the opposition of “us” and “others” in a way that makes “us” look better. The “we” appears as general and not manifest and as such it is juxtaposed to “the others”, who are attributed characteristics that differentiate them and place them outside the social system, as explained in the previous chapters (see Konstantinidou, 2001).

94

Analysis

Greece and Spain are located at the two ends of Europe, quite far from its center. Furthermore, they are geographically very close to countries of the Third and former Second World (former communist countries) with political and economic problems and low living standards. In other words, they are close to countries facing problems similar to those that they too faced in their recent past. The combination of a past of poverty and of slow development, together with the geographical distance from the center of the West, intensifies the desire to shake off the stigma of underdevelopment and to identify with the West. As noted by Colectivo Ioé (1995), Spain pursues approximation with “Europe”, which it identifies with modernization and constitutes an indisputable aim, while, on the other hand, Africa and the rest of the Third World are more and more considered as the “other”, poor and lagging behind. The same is true for Greece with regard to the Balkans and the East. The presence of immigrants, who come precisely from these parts of the world that are burdened with the stigma of the underdeveloped, activates the defensive reflexes and the need to build the antithesis between “us” and “them”. Immigrants remind the two countries of their disadvantaged geographical surroundings, which signify the danger of regression. The geographical surroundings and the immigrants who come from these places signify an additional danger, a danger to the national identity and national sovereignty. The insecurities and phobias the two countries have of losing their ethnic characteristics as well as their territorial sovereignty are reflected in the way immigrants are treated by these societies and their media. The majority of immigrants in Greece and Spain come from neighboring countries with which there exists an unpleasant past and border disputes: Albania and Morocco, respectively. For Greece, the settlement of Albanians in the territory of Epirus causes fear of potential claims for unification of this area with Albania in the context of the creation of the “Greater Albania”, which constitutes a fundamental concept in the nationalist discourse of the neighboring country (as was the creation of the “Greater Bulgaria”, including the areas of Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece, or that of the “Greater Greece”, including all areas that were part of ancient Greece, a plan that was abandoned after the Asia Minor Disaster in 1922). This fear, which remained dormant until the 1990s, was revived with the dissolution of the Former Yugoslavia, the subsequent territorial and population changes in the region, and the rise of nationalism in the Balkans. For Spain, the increase of the number of Moroccans in its territory adds to the agitation in relation to its long-lasting dispute with Morocco over the control of territory in Northern Morocco (notably the two Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla), causing Spain to fear that it will lose national sovereignty over part of its territory. Whether and to what extent these fears are justified, given the fact that both Greece and Spain are members of the EU and NATO, organizations that, at least in theory, guarantee security and territorial integrity, does not seem to have any serious impact on the framing of immigrants and their perception as a “threat” in the two countries. The collective cognitive schemata to which this framing refers are particularly powerful. In Greece, there is the powerful schema of achieving freedom and independence from neighboring enemies, who have always coveted its national sovereignty. National 95

Picturing Immigration

homogeneity and the predominance of the Greek ethnic element in the area where the ancient Greek civilization had flourished were achieved through struggles and wars. The “re-conquest” of Greece by the Greek ethnic element was achieved with great difficulty and rather recently (considering the area’s history), so that there still exists an underlying insecurity as to the preservation of its sovereignty, which is expressed by the insistence on conspiracy theories, a favorite topic in the country’s public discourse. After the improvement of relations with Turkey, the traditional enemy of Greece, the new enemies now come from the Balkans. The rise of nationalism in this area as well as the continuous conflicts and territorial and population reshuffling intensify the attachment to conspiracy theories on the part of Greece, something which was reflected in the entrance of the right-wing party, the Popular Orthodox Rally (LA.O.S.), in parliament, in the elections of 2007. In Spain, the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Christian (Catholic) monarchs who defeated their north-African conquerors, dominates historical memory and leads to the categorization of populations coming from Northern Africa as potential “enemies”. This stigma is enhanced by the fact that Moroccans took part in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Franco, whose dictatorial regime ruled Spain for forty years and delayed its progress. Within Spanish society there is a smoldering insecurity over the “return of the Moors”, as the influx of immigrants from Africa is often referred to. As already mentioned, photographs of immigrants in the Spanish newspapers depict mostly black people, that is, people coming from sub-Saharan Africa and not from Northern Africa, where the majority of immigrants to Spain actually come from and where the Arab conquerors also came from some centuries ago. One would expect that the danger of the “return of the Moors” would be signified by Moroccans, Algerians, or other Northern Africans. But the physiognomy of Northern Africans is not as different from the Spanish physiognomy as that of sub-Saharan Africans. Black people signify more effectively the African continent and black immigrants signify more effectively the “danger from Africa” than people who are just a little darker – and often not much darker than native inhabitants of Southern Spain. Conspiracy theories are not absent from Spanish society, either, especially since the terrorist attack of 11 March 2004, which occurred one year before the regularization program during which the sample photographs of this research were collected. Terrorists attacked Madrid in retaliation for Spain’s participation in the so called “War Against Terrorism” by contributing troops who aided in the US invasion of Iraq. Many of the terrorists who took part in the organizing and executing the attack were immigrants residing in Spain, thus constituting an “internal enemy”, as in the case of the USA or the UK, where similar attacks took place. It is worth noting that the idea of ethnic homogeneity is not as strong in Spain as it is in Greece since Spain is already familiar with secessionist tendencies from areas such as Catalonia, the Basque Country, and, to a lesser extent, Galicia, where people define themselves as ethnically different from the rest of the Spanish population. However, these secession movements have been nurturing Spain’s insecurity regarding the maintenance of its sovereignty over the Iberian Peninsula, an insecurity that is further reinforced by the 96

Analysis

presence of immigrants from Morocco. Furthermore, the significant demographic problem that both countries are facing (reduced birth rates as well as the increased birth rates of their immigrant populations) rather aggravates insecurities regarding ethnic homogeneity, ethnic continuation and survival, the preservation of their dominant position, or maintenance of territorial sovereignty and integrity. In countries where there is insecurity regarding territorial sovereignty, ethnic otherness is considered as threatening since it incites the fear of loss of ethnic identity, an important element for the preservation of unity, and consequently, sovereignty. In the case of immigrants, such otherness is particularly apparent due to their physiognomy and racial attributes as well as due to the difference in living conditions, compared to the dominant, local population. Difference in origin, appearance, social behavior, and way of life is condemned by members of the dominant, yet insecure, majority. Immigrants are stigmatized as non-integratable and are marked as a “corpus alienum”, a tangible enemy – something hostile and threatening. The majority group desires and attempts to dispose of them in order to ensure its own wellbeing (see Τsoukala, 2001). Until the 1990s tolerance in Southern European societies, more specifically in Spain and Greece, had never actually been put to the test. Treatment of foreigners meant friendly behavior and hospitality toward exchange-currency bearers and affluent tourists or tolerance toward the then few immigrants, whose presence and activities were limited to their ethnic communities (see Karydis, 1996). But from the beginning of the 1990s, when the influx and presence of immigrants intensified, xenophobic tendencies started to arise, as was shown in the surveys presented in Chapter 2. With the advent of the 21st century, these tendencies consolidated as it became clear that Spain and Greece were no longer simply stop-over locations or transit countries but destination countries for immigrant populations, where they settled, followed by their families.

4.2 Societies in Crisis: Immigration and Frames The period from 2000 onward is marked by various events and conditions that render it a particularly critical period. Globalization touched more and more people in their everyday lives, ending certainties of the past and replacing them with new conditions, uncertainty, and fluidity. In Europe, the consequent changes in local economies in a way that damages small-scale enterprises and creates social insecurity was accompanied by the establishment of the common European currency (Euro), which replaced local currencies and was often used as a pretext for raising prices. The strengthening of the EU as a political entity through the course of European integration as well as its enlargement with the inclusion of ten new members reduced the powers of member-states for the sake of pursuing the common goals of an expanded formation. Member-states, especially the small ones, became somewhat smaller parts of the whole and financial support now had to be divided among more

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countries, whose economic situation was even worse than that of traditional recipients, i.e. Southern European member-states. Furthermore, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, in New York City signaled the beginning of an era of increased insecurity and economic recession. The world was divided in two once more, but this time the sides were, on the one hand, the democratic and liberal West, and on the other, the conservative, lagging-behind East, which primarily meant the fundamentalist Islamic world. The new enemy now originated from the Arabic countries, from large chunks of that dark and unknown part of the world that is generally and vaguely referred to as the Third World. This part of the world is the place of origin of the people who migrate worldwide, some of whom end up in countries of the West. The “we” of Westerners extends beyond national or local borders and coincides with something larger, which summons up the positive elements and achievements of Western civilization, of democracy, of freedom, of progress. The “other” coincides with something larger, too, but something that summons up a plethora of negative elements, such as the lack of freedom and the presence of autarchy and oppression. In this newly divided global reality the “we” of the West coincides with the Good and the “other” with the Bad. In periods of crisis, societies seek ways to relieve the tensions they experience. The social construction of “scapegoats” is the typical reaction to such situations. Moschopoulou (2005) analyzes this process as it is formatted in Douglas’s model: at first, a society faces a problem or a problematic situation such as stagnation, economic recession, or insecurity. Due to the difficulty it faces in the attempt to provide solutions or answers and explanations for the situation it experiences, it turns against some of its members and blames them for the problem (in this case, the term “member” is taken in its broad sense as it can also refer to persons who are not accepted as rightful members, but simply exist in the given society). Such members, who are given the blame, are most commonly different from the majority as to certain characteristics, such as skin color, way of life, lack of power, lack of conformity to established norms, etc., in other words, they possess unfamiliar characteristics. These persons usually do not resist the blame due to fear or due to their vulnerable position in society. As a result, they become the scapegoats through whom the dominant majority defuses its tensions and regains its balance and cohesion. Two typical examples are the cases of “Mods” and “Rockers” in the UK and of Maori in New Zealand. In the first case, clashes between the youth groups “Mods” and “Rockers” motivated their demonization and led to the creation of moral panic by the media (see Cohen, 1972). In the second case, the emphasis given by the media on criminal acts committed by young Maoris in 1979–80 created the impression of a social threat and led to the demonization of the whole Maori ethnic group (see Moschopoulou, 2005). “Mods” and “Rockers” as well as the Maori were used in order to defuse the anxiety experienced by the societies in question due to unemployment and economic stagnation at that time. By turning a small group into a scapegoat, the large group ensures its survival as well as the confirmation of its own positive identity and superiority through its juxtaposition with the negative identity of the out-group (see Moschopoulou, 2005). Concentrating all problems 98

Analysis

on some of its members and channeling its tensions to them allows a society to preserve its structures that seem to be threatened by these problems, from which it prefers to look away due to its incapability to deal with them. The creation of an enemy, of a scapegoat, allows a society to redefine itself and continue its course shifting the problem of the insecurity it experiences to something more concrete and visible, something easier to deal with. By stigmatizing some “problematic” and deviant members of society, the dominant group reconfirms its values and ensures its cohesion though an emotional discharge. The members that diverge from the average are classified as “others” and as such they constitute the most convenient targets. In Western societies, the subject of public discourse is traditionally considered to be white, middle class, and male. Women, people of other races, classes, and ethnic or religious minorities as well as social minorities are defined and perceived as “others”, as deviations. Immigrants constitute such deviations due to their usually apparent racial, cultural, social, and economic difference in relation to the average citizen of the receiving society. The contradiction between national/local and foreign is the least disputable social distinction and consequently the most convenient form of distinction between “us” and “others” (Μoschopoulou, 2005). As Tsoukala (2001) mentions, hostility toward immigrants is due to the receiving population’s anxiety regarding the country’s economic situation and the belief that immigration reduces job availability, the fear that society will degrade, or the correlation of immigration to issues of national sovereignty, border integrity, and violation of law. The rise of xenophobia in Europe in recent years reflects the difficulty with which these populations deal with the profound changes that occurred in their lives with the advent of the era of globalization, of the era of misconceived flexibility, instability, and insecurity. Europe is trying anxiously to preserve its privileges, and it creates through the media, the exponents of public discourse, the enemy within and outside the walls. The legal framework in Greece and Spain, as presented above (Chapter 2), is rather unfavorable and discouraging toward immigrants, thus coming in accordance with the negative disposition regarding the influx of immigrants, that is prevalent in all the EU. Reducing legal and illegal immigration into fortress Europe is correlated to the protection of national and cultural identity and to the preservation of economic prosperity, which the national population may often feel are being threatened by the prospective invaders (see Van Gorp, 2005). As Bauman puts it, Threats are projections of a society’s own inner ambivalence about its own ways and means; about the fashion in which it lives and perpetuates its living. A society unsure about the survival of its mode of being develops the mentality of a besieged fortress. The enemies who lay siege on its walls are its own, very own “inner demons”, the suppressed, ambient fears which permeate its daily life, its “normality” (2002: 73). These fears must be quelled through their transubstantiation into a corpus alienum, into a tangible enemy. Bauman claims that in modern, consumer societies such an enemy is found in the face of the poor, the “unfulfilled” consumers, having limited abilities to 99

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participate in the consumer race, thus failing to accept and incorporate in practice the most fundamental contemporary social values. This contemporary “underclass” constitutes the internal enemy to which the affluent society, not at all sure of itself anymore, channels its fears and anxieties. According to Bauman (2002), the term “underclass” refers to people who cause fear. Aren’t immigrants the new international “underclass” who cause fear since, besides being ethnically and culturally different, they are also poor in affluent societies worried about the preservation of their prosperity in the era of flexibility, temporary jobs, and low salaries? Starting from the standpoint that every society constitutes a sub-system within the global system, Hoffmann-Nowotny (1997) claims that immigration does not depend so much on the tensions within a society as on the unequal distribution of tensions within the whole system, the global society. In other words, international migration can be described and explained not as a single, isolated issue but as part of a larger and more complex phenomenon. Migration is more a result of the structures and cultural attributes of global society. Hoffmann-Nowotny (1997) distinguishes the following two elements as the most important factors determining the possibility to migrate: (a) a development gap, as a matter of structure, and (b) the assimilation of cultural values, as a cultural element. It is the unequal distribution of wealth and the assimilation of certain cultural values globally that cause mobility. According to United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the richest 1% of the inhabitants of the planet possess the same as the poorest 57%. More than fifty countries became poorer over the last decade. The problem of course is not merely economic – it does include other parameters. Poorer countries also suffer from AIDS, civil wars, undemocratic regimes, violation of human rights, illiteracy, high death rates among children, etc. This situation allows us to speak of a stratified international society. That is, there exists an international lower class, an international middle class, and an international upper class. The perception of what constitutes development is shared among world populations living in one global society. The prevalence of the values of the Western way of life, centered around the pursuit of money and wealth, the concentration and consumption of as many goods as possible that guarantee everyday comforts or luxuries but also the privileges of social equality, democracy, and justice, are accompanied by corresponding images presented through the global media and advertising. These values as visualized by the media and circulated throughout the world have become the goal even for citizens of countries who are far from reaching them. Media images of the Western lifestyle include a subtle “certainty” of success. Without underestimating the range of other reasons that cause people to migrate (natural disasters, war, famine, etc.), media images of good and prosperous living constitute an important factor that influences the decision to migrate. In this context, immigration is seen as a means for upward social mobility from one (global) social class to a higher one and the conquest of the Western values, which have been assimilated by populations all over the world (Hoffman-Nowotny, 1997).

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4.3 Frames and the Media Under conditions of insecurity and uncertainty, the media find the opportunity not only to express but also to inflate existing fears and insecurities so as to attract audience attention. As they address an audience that is heterogeneous in terms of social class, level of education, economic capacity, etc., media tend to adopt a simplified and standardized version of reality. As a result, on the one hand the media avoid conflicts, and on the other, they deliver messages that are easily understood as they are “served” in a standardized, stereotypical manner. As it is argued (Herman & Chomsky, 2002), the media manufacture social consent by means of a continuous “brain washing” that goes unnoticed since it is a much more discreet and subtle procedure than manipulation or propaganda. The messages transmitted are always ideologically charged and reality is presented in a way that already contains a preferred interpretation of it. In the end, what is being transmitted is not reality itself but a socially constructed reality. According to Hall (1982), the media not only distort reality, they also define it. They provide the framework in which reality is perceived in a way that re-enforces the status quo. The media-defined reality does not come into conflict with established beliefs and so it does not clash with the social consensus (1982). On the contrary, it presents dominant ideology as something natural, as the only possible way to interpret the world around us. Thus, the dominant ideology is legitimized, justified, and perpetuated. Media content is the product of selections and exclusions of the available aspects of reality. The process of selection and interpretation is culturally and socially defined. As was shown in the press photographs of the Greek and Spanish newspapers, certain aspects of the immigrants’ reality and identity are emphasized while others either receive limited coverage or are completely excluded from the agenda. As a result, immigrants are framed in a way that on the one hand corresponds to pre-existing cognitive schemata in the mind of the audience and on the other hand legitimizes the perceptions and beliefs associated with them. Furthermore, framing choices regarding which aspects are going to be emphasized and how that is to be done are often determined by the ideology and style of each medium. In the two groups of newspapers studied here, in most cases, a more immigrant-friendly approach was adopted by the two newspapers that have a less professional-looking format and a more popular and even partisan style. The newspapers characterized by a more professional format and style (i.e. the three Spanish newspapers and the Greek conservative one) adopt a less immigrant-friendly approach. Of course, three out of these four newspapers are placed in the right side of the political–ideological spectrum and only one, El País, is a paper of the Center Left. However, El País, with its professional-looking format, does not differentiate from the conservative newspapers, as the two Greek newspapers of the Left with their more popular look. With the exception of El Mundo, each newspaper stands out in the use of certain framing techniques:

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t

,BUIJNFSJOJ (Center Right) avoids close distance. As a rule, it depicts immigrants in groups, together with other immigrants and without establishing any form of communication or contact between them and the viewers. t

5B
/FB
(Center Left) uses a plethora of mug shots, taken from a close distance, individual photographs, and pictures where immigrants are depicted with a positive expression, while it is also the newspaper with the least number of photographs were immigrants are shown together with other immigrants. t
&
MFęIFSPUZQJB (Left), contains many mug shots taken from a close distance, individual photographs, and resorts most frequently to using the thematic context “crime”, where, however, immigrants appear as victims. t

&M
1BÓT (Center Left) does not contain any pictures shot from a close distance, while, by contrast to the rest of the papers, it contains an equal distribution of depicted men and women. t

"#$ (Right, monarchist) makes use of many photographs shot from a close distance, and, as with Eleftherotypia and Ta Nea, it contains a lot of mug shots. Considering the above, one can observe that the Greek press seems to represent immigrants in a more ideologically consistent way than the Spanish press, as the Right adopts a less immigrant-friendly approach than the Left through the most frequent use of certain framing techniques. This distinction should come as no surprise in a country where the Left–Right divide is still very strong, due to events in the country’s recent past (Civil War, dictatorship trauma). The Spanish press, on the other hand, appears less ideologically consistent in its visual treatment of immigrants and is characterized by a more professional appearance, conforming to what is understood as the standards of professional photojournalism. Perhaps a reason behind this is that the Spanish media market in general is more mature in the sense that it involves large, foreign media companies that are active in the country and influence the media landscape. However, this influence seems to have a negative effect in the issues discussed here, as the three Spanish newspapers provide a rather homogenous visual representation of immigrants with very little variation. As Becker (1998) argues, through the repetition of a limited number of themes images provide their own socio-economic context, their own frame of reference. Through repetition, viewers receive the necessary information in order to reach by themselves certain conclusions regarding the depicted objects. In other words, they are taught to understand the specific interpretation of reality that is promoted through the repetition of similar images. Thus, a common visual language is created, a language understood by the members of a given society. At the same time, the social context as well as the context of presentation signify images. Photographs appearing in a newspaper have a documentary function; they are considered valid and credible depictions of reality and are perceived as evidence. Furthermore, as Hagaman’s (1993) content analysis showed, press photographs contain only a limited number of themes and compositions, due to the nature of the newspaper as a medium (see 102

Analysis

Chapter 1). In addition, a fundamental attribute of news reporting is the focus on negative events and situations, on the presentation of the exception and not of the normality of life. Focusing on negative news is one of the main principles of news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). Consequently, images appearing in such a context follow the same practice of limited thematic categories and of focusing on negative aspects of reality. The context in which they appear influences the way images frame their subjects visually. Even though photographs are ideological signifiers, the given visual framing of reality does not usually constitute a conscious and deliberate choice on the part of editors or photojournalists. As Herman & Chomsky (1988) have pointed out, the primary news material goes through filters that define what is worthy of being considered as news and of being presented as such. The operation of these filters is so deeply embedded in journalistic practice that it is conducted “naturally” and without being noticed. Journalists may act in good faith and with the aim to present reality in an objective and ethically correct manner, but the context in which the media and they themselves function leads to the presentation of reality in particular, ideologically charged ways that can have effects opposite to those intended. A Spanish photojournalist, who was presenting his photographs at an exhibition regarding immigration, stated, in a personal conversation with the author, that his aim was to wake up and mobilize public opinion about the drama of the immigrants’ situation, particularly with regard to their dangerous attempts to reach the Spanish soil from the African coasts in simple boats. Indeed, his photographs, some of which were very “strong” and emotionally intense, framed immigrants as impoverished “victims”, a rather widespread practice. But this stereotypical depiction silenced all other aspects of the normality of the immigrants’ life, insisting rather on their visual framing as “others”, as being and belonging outside the realm of normality. Thus, poverty and hardship become attributes inextricably associated with the persons depicted. These attributes are not questioned or disputed. On the contrary, they are continuously reconfirmed through the repetition of similar images, which present the situation of immigrants as eternal and natural, as something that simply “is like that” and is exhibited for viewing by the privileged, dominant majority. The power of the gaze of the dominant majority is imposed on immigrants just as the power of the gaze of the Westerner has been imposed on other peoples, civilizations, or the lower social classes (see Scarpelos, in press). The media’s stereotypical framing of immigrants as “threatening others” may have an impact also on the way they perceive themselves. This is the phenomenon of the “selffulfilling prophecy”, which leads to the confirmation of the stereotype as it is internalized by the person or persons who are depicted in a stereotypical way. The stigmatization of the deviant leads to secondary deviation as the deviant internalizes the stigma and transforms it to an element of his/her identity and behavior (see Moschopoulou, 2005; Karydis, 2001). Classification of immigrants as “others” thus potentially hinders integration as they themselves experience their identity as something alien to the receiving society, as corpus 103

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alienum. Furthermore, the rejection of immigrants by the receiving society as “threatening others” and their consequent social exclusion may potentially lead to the manifestation of truly threatening behavior toward the society that rejects them. An illustrative example is that of the riots in the suburbs of Paris in November 2005. In that month Europe was shaken by the social unrest in the immigrant-inhabited suburbs of Paris. What caused anxiety and concern was that those involved in the riots were secondand third-generation immigrants who had been born, raised, and educated in France. But these second- and third-generation immigrants had experienced social exclusion for years. In this case, the enemy within walls was being nurtured by the walled society itself and its agents, the media included, leading to an outbreak of rage and violence that confirmed the fears that the same society was trying to suppress.

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Chapter 5 Conclusion

I

n recent years, immigration has been the subject of various research projects in many countries. Particularly in countries that only recently transformed from traditional emigration to countries of reception, as is the case for those in Southern Europe, this transformation and the consequent changes in their social landscape are susceptible to scientific investigation from many angles. Furthermore, conducting comparative research is a challenge, especially for countries of Southern Europe, where less comparative research is available compared to the countries of the North. The issue of the depiction of immigrants in the media is particularly significant because, on the one hand, the media define to a great extent the local population’s attitude toward immigrants, since direct contact is usually either non-existent or extremely limited and superficial. On the other hand, media discourse – verbal or visual – constitutes a cultural product reflecting social perceptions and cognitive schemata, using a language that is coded but understood by everyone belonging to the given society. Framing theory has become the prevalent theory in the study of media products. The majority of relevant research has focused on verbal representations, neglecting the media’s visual discourse. However, a clear shift toward the study of images is noted as well as increasing interest in isolating images and using them as autonomous units of analysis. This book attempted a synthesis of the above issues, using framing theory in the comparative investigation of the way in which the press of two Southern European countries visually frames immigrants. The sample of the research comprised photographs from three Greek and three Spanish national newspapers of high circulation and prestige (Kathimerini, Ta Nea, Eleftherotypia, ABC, El Mundo, and El País). Using content analysis as a tool for the study of the photographs, the mechanisms of visual framing were identified and the frames used were extracted. The process focused on the identification of frames that correspond to general and collective cognitive schemata in the two countries, due to their common characteristics and experiences and not to schemata that are specific for each country or to individual schemata.

Picturing Immigration

The Spanish newspapers contained a proportionally higher number of photographs than the Greek ones. This is because, on the one hand, the Spanish regularization program was of a much larger scale and participation rate than the Greek one, and on the other, precisely because of its scale and its opposition to the official EU policy on the matter, it provoked intense public discussion and debate. By contrast, the regularization program in Greece, was of limited scale, and so it did not constitute a topic for public debate and was hardly noticed. The majority of the photographs give visual emphasis on groups of immigrants and overshadow their individuality by depicting them in groups, together with other immigrants, and mainly in the thematic categories of “regularization”, “work”, and “arrival” in the Spanish papers and “crime”, “no context”, and “social life” in the Greek ones. The immigrant’s profile, as it appears in the sample photographs is the following: in Greece the immigrant is young, white, and male, while in Spain young, black, and male. As far as origin is concerned, the Greek press photographs reflect reality while the Spanish photographs don’t, since the majority immigrant group in Spain is the Moroccans and not those coming from sub-Saharan Africa. As far as gender is concerned, both groups of photographs distort reality, obscuring the numerically equal presence of women. In both countries, immigrants appear without any expression and without having any symbolic contact with the viewers, who are assumed to belong to the national population of each country. Lastly, immigrants are photographed from a “safe” social distance. It is noteworthy, that although the sample was collected during the regularization programs, no visual emphasis on the issue is given through the use of large-size photographs in either of the two countries. All newspapers of the sample, with the exception of El País, follow the practice of depicting women less frequently in individual photographs. Another point of interest is that the majority of photographs in which the female gender looks toward the camera, establishing a symbolic relationship with the viewer, depict children (girls). A common observation about both countries is that women and children are presented more frequently than men in aspects of the social life of immigrants, as this category comes second in frequency in both countries. Based on the findings from the content analysis, the same frames were found in the two countries, with small variations in the visual framing mechanisms in each one. It was found that immigrants are framed as “others” and as a “threat”, through the use of visual conventions. The cognitive schemata to which these frames refer are relevant to the historical past of the two countries (foreign occupation, sovereignty disputes), as well as their social past (poverty, emigration), present (unemployment, insecurity, economic hardship) and future (uncertainty, pessimism, fear). The traditional techniques of visual framing of otherness that form the first frame are the presentation of immigrants in groups, their limited interaction with the local population and depiction with other immigrants instead, a preference for medium and long shots that emphasize the otherness of the depicted persons and establish an impersonal relationship with the viewers, and, finally, the absence of a symbolic communication with the viewers since the depicted persons do not look toward the camera and do not express emotions but appear, as a rule, without expression. 106

Conclusion

The most significant mechanism for the visual framing of immigrants as a “threat” is their depiction in groups and the preference in presenting them as an amorphous and impersonal mass. According to the sample photographs, immigrants are a mass of men. Since violent behavior, particularly physically violent behavior, is historically a male attribute, while women are associated with non-threatening activities and passive roles, it becomes obvious that a mass of male immigrants appears as more threatening that a mass of female immigrants would. In the Spanish newspapers there exists one more element that contributes to the framing of immigrants as a threat: the fact that, as a rule, they depict black people (men), even though black immigrants do not constitute the majority of immigrants in Spain. As it was analyzed, the African continent is signified by blackness and, consequently, blackness signifies more effectively the alleged “danger” from Africa, that is, the danger of the return of the Moors, than the depiction of Moroccans, Algerians, or other Northern Africans would. Lastly, the visual framing of immigrants as “others” functions itself as a mechanism framing them as a “threat”, too. The Greek newspapers appear more consistent in their visual treatment of immigrants with their ideological or political orientation as the Left–Right divide is rather deep. The newspapers of the Left adopt a more immigrant-friendly approach than the newspaper of the Center Right. In the Spanish press the visual treatment of immigrants is more homogeneous, with very little variation, so that one cannot support the view that the Right newspapers appear less immigrant friendly than the Left. The findings of this book record the way in which immigrants in Greece and Spain are visually framed in the press, providing an indication, based on prevalent theoretical perspectives, for the possible reactions of local populations toward immigrants. Even though media visual texts constitute a significant factor affecting the formation of public opinion, the audience’s real reactions to the visual stimuli of the media can and should be investigated by means of audience research. It would also be interesting to investigate the views of those who work in the media, such as journalists, photojournalists, and editors. Of course, the views of immigrants themselves on issues pertaining to them should not be neglected. It is important to investigate the reactions of immigrants to photographs in which they are depicted and to illustrate the way they experience their own identity in order to determine the existence or not of secondary deviation and of whether or not they tend to internalize the stereotypes that the media circulate about them. Furthermore, it would be interesting to study the framing of immigrants in the tabloid press, in the context of a comparison with the so called “serious” newspapers, as well as the way the local press deals with immigrants visually, compared to the national press. Such comparative studies should expand in order to include a larger sample from longer periods of time and from other media that use visual discourse (e.g. television, internet). Finally, a cross country comparison including more countries would shed more light on these issues that affect almost every nation in the world and would yield interesting results about the way different media in different countries visually frame immigrants.

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The photographs providing the material of this book were not dealt with as fake, distorted, manipulated, or staged, but were rather accepted as authentic depictions of reality. As such, yes, they do present immigrants the way they are, depicting the reality that was in front of the camera at a given moment. However, they do not present reality in its entirety, but only a part of it, the part that corresponds to established and easily recognizable cognitive schemata. They constitute depictions of selected aspects of reality using a limited visual repertoire which directs toward specific readings.

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