Racialized Boundaries Against Haitian Immigrants in Chile: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Racism is a type of systematic power abuse by a dominant group against diverse minorities through discursive and material practices (Van Dijk, 2021). This article draws attention to the generation of racializing discourses, particularly towards the Haitian immigrant population in Chile, in (a) mass media, which mainly focuses on radio, television, and newspapers such as Radio Bíobío, Chilevision, and La Tercera newspaper, and (b) government policy, as articulated in the 2018 executive order “Plan Humanitarian Orderly Return” (PHOR). After delineating the historical background of recent Haitian migration to Chile, authors deploy Critical Discourses Analysis (CDA) of two powerful cases of popularly mediated racializing discourses reflected in media coverage of (a) the case of a Haitian woman, Joane Florvil, who died soon after taken into police custody on a wrongful charge of abandoning her infant in 2017 and (b) the racially inflected 2018 executive order PHOR which overwhelmingly targeted Haitians for “voluntary deportation”. Authors consider headlines, article coverage of institutional agents and minority subjects, and state-generated documents. Informed by postcolonial thought, the study discusses current expressions of racialized boundaries in the Chilean media focusing particularly on the disciplining and regulation of migrants based on the idea of order.