Racialized geographies of Afro-Caribbean migration in the Chilean digital press. From urban characterization to neighborhood threat, 2016-2021

Abstract

Afro-Caribbean migration in Chile is distributed mainly in the cities of the north and center of the country. The representation of these geographies in the media speaks of supposed forms of migrant habitation, which deepen the stigmatization and stereotypes about these populations and the territories they inhabit. The descriptive inductive analysis on international migration in online media between 2016 and 2021 evidenced a shift in the representations about these groups and the sectors of their residence, which began with the sociodemographic characterization, to move on to build on this inhabiting a health alert in the context of COVID-19. In this flight, the discourses of national and local authorities were key, associating communes and housing morphologies to migrant populations, overlapping territorial and housing problems to migratory categories and nationalities. The text problematizes the use of these discourses for territorial stigmatization.

Keywords:
Afro-descendant; migration; digital press; territorial stigmatization