The Double-Edged Sword Of Humanizing Migrants
By: Hassan Ghedi Santur
Tags: Refugees, Media, Opinion, Migrants, Journalism

Last month, the world witnessed a photograph that might very well become the defining image of the migrant crisis taking place at the southern border of the United States.

The shocking photograph depicts Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 2-year-old daughter Angie Valeria lying face down on the banks of the Rio Grande. It is a haunting symbol of the individual tragedies many migrants face as they make a long and often deadly trek in search of a better life.

This particular image has become a rallying cry for those on the left who support migrants’ rights — as well as for some on the far right, who blame the father for the death of his daughter.



I remember looking at that photo and being struck by the double tragedy conveyed within that single frame. Yes, the photo itself is heartbreaking: a father and daughter still holding on to each other in death as they did in life. They are figures for our collective pathos. However, the photo also signified to me another, less obvious, tragedy. We will never know who Óscar and Angie really were, the multi-dimensional human beings they were in life.

Following the publication of that photo, some news outlets did an effective job of trying to tell their story, and what compelled them to make the dangerous journey. One could almost hear an editor assigning a reporter: “Go and find out who they really are. Humanize them.”

How do those of us in the media tell the stories of migrants and refugees? What kinds of one-dimensional portraits do we sometimes, wittingly and unwittingly, paint of them? To what extent do we, depending on our political persuasions, either vilify migrants or portray them as pathetic figures — and in the process, turn their stories into what writer Nesrine Malik calls “pornified pity”?

Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere, edited by Ismail Einashe and Thomas Roueché (Valiz, 2019).

I recently read a wonderful and timely new book, “Lost in Media: Migrant Perspectives and the Public Sphere.” The book, composed of essays and conversations, grew out of the European Cultural Foundation’s project “Displaced in Media,” which worked with young filmmakers of migrant and refugee backgrounds across Europe to try and reframe media narratives.

The fact that many contributors have migration and displacement in their biographies is not by accident. One of the editors of the book, Thomas Roueché, told me by email that “it was important to give space to journalists and writers who are of migrant backgrounds to discuss things on their own terms.”

Unfortunately, most of the stories about migrants that we encounter in mainstream media are not told on their own terms. Their stories are often written by well-meaning Western journalists whose intention seems to be to “humanize” them, so that European citizens can understand and empathize with their plight.

For Nesrine Malik, one of contributors to the book, there is an inherent problem in this type of storytelling. In her essay, “Humanizing Stories Migrants and the Media,” she argues that the stories we read about refugees in the media are often not really about them but about the politics, culture, and agendas of host countries. “‘Humanizing’ is a tricky business,” she writes. “We are always told that migrants need to be ‘humanized’ if they are to be accepted, if an effective counter narrative to the populist one is to be written.”

As a result, there is now what she calls a “cottage industry of humanization” in journalism that places at the center, “the human migrant.”

One might wonder: What’s wrong with “humanizing” migrants and refugees? After all, isn’t that how the reader will come to learn and care about what compels people to risk their lives and leave home? Isn’t it a good thing if the American public really understands what Ramírez was running from when he took his daughter Angie on that fateful journey from El Salvador? And if learning their story could lead to more Americans supporting and accepting Central American migrants, well, what’s the harm in that?

For Malik, the problem is that ironically, humanizing migrants can have the converse effect of dehumanizing them — or at the very least, flattening them to mere stick figures. “Migrant stories are told like parables,” she writes, “with endings that tie up neatly, reaffirming our faith in mankind, or sounding a warning about what mankind is capable of. These are one-dimensional images, told flat, heavily edited, and primarily recounted from the host’s perspective.”

That is what’s at the heart of the problem with well-intentioned journalists’ attempts at “humanizing” migrants. The resulting stories are often told from the host’s perspective, reducing migrants into heroes whose bravery should inspire us all, or worse, victims in need of our collective pity. Instead of portraying them like the rest of us: brave, opportunistic, flawed, envious, honest, striving, bitter, duplicitous, loving.