Postcolonial migration and narratives of colonisation in the European media landscape: a discursive analysis
(2026) Doctoral seminar “Carlos V European Awards - António Guterres” — Location: Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste (22.July.2026)
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- Abstract
- (en) Recording of the presentation: https://youtu.be/cbBWt_LNJ30?si=2B6Uon9E_pIcyHDo The concept of postcolonial migration refers to the process whereby migration movements from a former colony (FC) to a former colonial power (FCP) of this former colony have been historically facilitated (Mains et al. 2013). These migrations, as well as the encounter between FC and FCP they produce, give rise to a bilateral reflection on colonial history. For the FCP and its inhabitants, the presence of people with origins from a FC already constitutes a reminder of the heritage of this history (Otele 2022:6) and of the different forms this heritage might take: debates about colonial crimes, construction of national identity, perception of the world order, etc. Migrants from FCs and their descendants, for their part, constitute migrantised minorities, in that they are perpetually assigned the label of migrants and subjected to the stigmas related to this label (see Kirndörfer & Pilz 2021). In this regard, living in a FCP implies constantly facing traces of a colonial narrative of this history, reflected, among others, in statues and street names commemorating colonisers (Goddeeris 2016), museums displaying objects from FC which were often taken by force (Opazo Sepúlveda 2025) and a systematic racism (United Nations 2025). The year 2020 was marked by the murder of George Floyd and the beginning of a new wave of protests related to #BlackLivesMatter. Since then, these migrantised diasporas have increasingly become the actors of an alternative narrative of colonisation (Verbeke 2020, Blaagaard 2023). In particular, they have been claiming a voice in the postcolonial debates in Europe (e.g. debates on excuses/reparations for colonial crimes, on the decolonisation of museums, etc.), denouncing the paradoxical exclusion of those who suffer the most from the consequences of colonialism. In response to these denunciations, the present study proposes to investigate the narratives of (post)colonial history to be found in the mediatic sphere of three FCPs (Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom) from a linguistic perspective. On the one hand, the project seeks to map who intervenes in press articles addressing (post)colonial past (voices from FCs vs from FCPs), and to analyse how these voices are presented in these articles by the journalists and by themselves in terms of identity features. Attention is paid to the space dedicated to voices from FCs in these articles (e.g. number of words, prominence, etc.). On the other hand, I analyse how (post)colonial history, FCs and FCPs are discursively represented by the previously identified voices. With these analyses, I seek to identify possible differences in how representations are constructed, depending on the person having a voice, on the type of media and on the type of event referred to (event which took place during colonial history vs later periods of time). (In a posterior phase of the project, I will also conduct interviews of members of the Bolivian, Congolese and Kenyan diaspora living in Spain, Belgium and the UK, respectively). Methodologically, I employ three main discursive concepts: i) agentivity, which enables to characterise the representation of groups in relation to the actions mentioned in a discourse, and thus to unveil the degree of responsibility discursively attributed to this group (De Cock & Michaud Maturana 2014) through an analysis of syntactic and semantic features related to the linguistic encoding of this group in the discourse; ii) meaningful silences, that is, clear omissions (of a piece of information, a voice, etc.) in a discourse produced in a context marked by a societal expectation to see the missing element mentioned (Schröter & Taylor 2018); iii) Membership Categorisation Analysis, a method which identifies the social categories (e.g. gender, ethnic background, etc.) made relevant by a speaker to describe a person in a discourse (Schrikant 2022). This contribution will present the findings of this research project’s pilot study, which contrasts articles public in various Spanish and Belgian media (RTVE Noticias, El País, El Español, Ethic for Spain, RTBF Actus, De Standaard, la DH and Mo* Magazine for Belgium). Through the three notions described above, I will show different linguistic mechanisms which are employed in these articles, and their possible effects on the cognitive representation of the postcolonial world and of migrantised actors. From there, we will see the benefits of including a linguistic perspective to the study of postcolonial migration, and how it enables to objectivise the multiplicity of narrative possibilities regarding (post)colonial history. In a context of postcolonial migration, it is essential to recognise this multiplicity and to include migrantised voices in postcolonial debates. This recognition and this inclusion are directly in line with the EU’s principles of democracy and fight against social exclusion expressed in the Treaty of Lisbon (European Union 2007).
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Niclaes, L. (2026, July 24). Postcolonial migration and narratives of colonisation in the European media landscape: a discursive analysis. Doctoral seminar “Carlos V European Awards - António Guterres”, Monastery of San Jerónimo de Yuste.