“I’m an Immigrant”: cosmopolitanism, alterity and communicational flows in an anti-xenophobia campaign in the UK

Abstract

This article aims to reflect on the relationship between communication, cosmopolitanism and alterity in migration processes, based on the critical discourse analysis of an anti-xenophobia advertising campaign called “I'm an Immigrant”, held in 2015 in the UK. From a conceptual discussion on notions of cosmopolitanism, identity, alterity, in its connections with representations and citizenship practices of transnational migrations, we analyzed the discourses of the campaign pieces’ texts that have been placed in urban areas of the city of London and in digital spaces on the internet. The analysis showed that the campaign contributes to give visibility to migrants, singularizing their trajectories. However, this singularity is built on the one hand, on the emphasis in an economistic dimension that associates immigration to work, without exposing its contradictions, and, on the other hand, based on a western, white and secular model, which operates for the erasure of differences that constitute UK´s migratory cultures.

Keywords
transnational migrations; cosmopolitanism; alterity; communicational flows; United Kingdom