Docile, criminal, and upwardly mobile?: Visual news framing of Mexican migrants and the logics of neoliberal multiculturalism

Abstract

This study examines visual and textual representations of Mexican migrants in English-language photojournalism over the course of a decade. We find three clusters of representations: (1) male laborers portrayed as outside the bounds of society but often unfairly victimized (2) migrants portrayed as criminal in encounters with law enforcement, and (3) all other migrants, often portrayed in ways that valorized those who had “made good” or fit in. These clusters initially appeared to employ entirely separate tropes about different demographics of migrants. However, we find that they instead often reflect the same migrant demographics in different geographies and at different moments of the migration trajectory. We argue that these tropes collectively reflect and promote the cultural and economic logic of neoliberal multiculturalism, serving the neoliberal state and legitimating the precarity of migrants in labor markets.