The making of ‘migration crisis’: Representing sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisian online media outlets

Sub-Saharan migrants and issues around ‘irregular’ migration to and through Tunisia have recently gained considerable media attention and engendered continuing public debate. Although media representation of ethnic minorities and migration has been a salient topic across different disciplines, the currently available body of research has focused on western societies with a long tradition of incoming migration. Whether their findings apply to societies in North Africa, and Tunisia in particular, has recently received increasing interest. However, little attention has been paid to the racialization of sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisian online media discourse. In this context, this study analyses the discursive strategies used to represent sub-Saharan migrants in Tunisian online news sites and how these contribute to a discriminatory discourse. The dataset consists of 50 articles, analysed using discourse analysis grounded in postcolonial theory. The findings reveal that sub-Saharans Africans are discursively constructed as undesirable through an Othering process that reproduces the ‘we–they’ dichotomy. This construction centres on discourses of racialization, illegality, violence and criminalization, as well as a counter-discourse that resists and denies accusations of racism.