ECREA16-Abstract

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Saturday, November 12

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DMM05 MediatingMobilities: Representations and Practices

PP 574

Mediating Migratory (Dis)Continuities – Precarity in Two Austrian Films

B. Hipfl

University of Klagenfurt, Media and Communications, Klagenfurt, Austria

This presentation will analyse two highly acclaimed Austrian films addressing (forced) migration of women from Eastern Europe to the West as exemplary

of the affective work that is done by contemporary media to cope with the current migratory (dis)continuities. The focus will be on the ways in which

precarity as 'the politically induced condition in which certain people and groups of people become differently exposed to injury, violence, poverty, indebt‑

edness, and death”(Butler and Athanasiou 2013, 19) is attached to the bodies of female migrants in media representations. I will examine the subjectivities

that are formed by these conditions as well as the social imaginaries that follow from that. While both films, the episode Angezählt (2013) from the most

popular German TV crime series Tatort, and the documentary filmMama Illegal (2011) by investigative journalist Ed Moschitz, address the poverty and lack

of perspectives that forces the female characters to leave their homes, the precarity that characterizes their lives in theWest, is deplloyed differently. The TV

crime episode Angezählt complies with Tatort’s intention to educate the public and make social changes and challenges accessible and digestible. In this

episode, precarity is presented as something that belongs to the racialized Other. The two young Bulgarian women, embodying insecurity and despair, are

portrayed as victims of their patriarchal home-culture, forced by their violent and criminal fellow-countrymen to do sex work in Austria. The overarching

logic structuring the film is one of us-and-them, a logic that is supported by the humanist intention of film director Sabine Derflinger to produce compas‑

sion for the victimized women in the audience. The transference of the migrant women’s feelings of despair to the female police investigator is the only

indicator that precarity is not only confined to the Other. The documentary film Mama Illegal resulted from an encounter of film director Ed Moschitz with

one of the characters, an undocumented domestic worker fromMoldavia whom he had hired as a nanny. The film, capturing key moments over seven years

in the lives of three Moldavian women working illegally in Austria and Italy, presents precarity as the continuous struggle to overcome what can be called,

following Lauren Berlant, 'cruel attachements”to ways of being and living. Precarization is presented as productive, defined by the capacity for refusal and

re-composition of one’s life (Isabell Lorey 2010). The three female characters undergo continuous processes of becoming, representing nomadic subjectivi‑

ties as theorized by Rosi Braidotti (2011, following Deleuze), relegating a new social imaginary.

PP 575

Refugee Movements and the Postmigrant Reality: Learning from Experience

V. Ratkovic

Alpen-Adria-Universitaet Klagenfurt, Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education, Klagenfurt, Austria

Research in media and communication studies dealing with migration has shown that the representation of migrants in mainstream media is not only

highly stereotypical but also mostly negative. Coverage of the current refugee movements thus taps into well-established stereotypes, metaphors and

islamophobic narratives: Refugees are often portrayed as a threat to the receiving societies, which tend to be presented as ethnically homogeneous. In this

paper, the focus is shifted away frommainstreammedia to a new and specific type of alternative media: Postmigrant Media; which is media that on the one

hand shows migration as an everyday phenomenon and on the other hand brings a critical notion to the discourse on migration. The term ‘Postmigrant

Media’ refers to the notion of ‘Postmigrant Societies’, which are societies that are in the process of acknowledging and evaluating the social, structural,

political and institutional effects of migration. In this paper, results of a critical discourse analysis of the Austrian magazine das biber. Stadtmagazin für

neue Österreicher are presented. das biber is mainly produced by (post)migrants living in Vienna and is aimed at both the ‘New Austrians’ (defined as

the second and third generation of immigrants) as well as those who appreciate the city’s diversity.The analysis shows that in das biber, challenging aspects

of the refugee movements are discussed but not dramatized. The refugees’ experiences (e.g. of alienation) tend to be related to those of other interview

partners (and of the journalists themselves) with ‘migrant backgrounds’and are consequently not shown as proof of fundamental differences but as com‑

mon consequences of encountering new surroundings. At the same time, the Austrian society is presented as already being ethnically and religiously diverse

and thus well capable of integrating the refugees (e.g. as students with ‘migrant backgrounds’ who speak Arabic are able to help Syrian children in class).

Accordingly, the coverage of the refugee movements by das biber serves as an example of the Postmigrant Media’s potential of transcending dominant

notions of belonging, inclusion and exclusion.

PP 576

Constructing an Imperial Portuguese-Ness Through Media Practices: The Case of Portuguese MuslimWomen of Indian

and Mozambican Origins

C. Valdigem Pereira

Goldsmiths- University of London, Media and Communications, London, United Kingdom

The history and the role of the media in forging a Portuguese Empire have only recently started to be unveiled and narrated. Despite the acknowledgement

that the media, together with the Great Exhibitions and colonial schooling, to name but a few, constituted important means of propaganda of the New

State Regime (1933–1974), aiming at engendering an Imperial Nation and constructing colonial identities (Ribeiro, 2005; Ribeiro, 2014; Cairo, 2006; Er‑

rante, 2003; Matos, 2006), not much is yet known with regard to how these tools have been appropriated, nor as to how they have had an impact both

on the perceptions of the Empire, and on the senses of Imperial-ness/ Imperial Portuguese-ness among those who have actually experienced them and

lived alongside them. This paper aims to contribute to this reflection by providing an analysis of the memories of the everyday life, in particular of media