Understanding and reimagining migration narratives in Spain

Abstract

The narratives about unaccompanied migrant youth have become so negatively charged in Spain, portraying them in news accounts and far-right campaigns as delinquent and violent. These narratives have become widely disseminated and deeply embedded in Spanish society. A survey of the Spanish public conducted by Maldita.es and Oxfam Intermón found that 82 percent of respondents have heard stories about migrant youth having a higher tendency to be violent. About a third said they believed this to be true. Fundación porCausa, a non-profit organization based in Madrid, seeks to challenge these dominant and distorted narratives about migrant youth. The organization strives to change and broaden public perceptions of migration in order to build a diverse and inclusive society without fear. However, in its narrative creation work so far, porCausa is missing a key voice—unaccompanied migrant youth themselves. The internal challenge that porCausa faces reflects a broader external issue in Spain. In an analysis of 22 Spanish news outlets, 80 percent of the articles about migration did not use a single migrant as a source. As researchers Daniela Jaramillo-Dent and María Amor Pérez-Rodríguez state, “The voice of the main character, the migrant, is mostly absent,” missing a critical perspective of the story. This policy analysis serves to guide porCausa in better understanding unaccompanied migrant youth’s perceptions of dominant migration narratives, with the aim of including their perspectives in porCausa’s new narrative creation work. Focusing specifically on Moroccan young men, the largest migrant youth community in Spain, this analysis seeks to answer:

What do unaccompanied male Moroccan migrant youth believe to be the dominant narratives about them in their host communities? Where do they encounter dominant narratives about them? How would they change these dominant narratives?