With the repetition of stereotypes that show a country as the victim of an invasion.
The authors of the Immigration Barometer believe that the media in Portugal are accentuating the bad image of immigrants, with the repetition of stereotypes that show a country as the victim of an invasion.
The authors of the extended survey by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, in an interview with Lusa, consider that the media are jointly responsible for the poor image of immigrants in Portugal, one of the conclusions of the study itself.
“It is necessary to always remember journalistic criteria when making decisions about what makes headline news,” he said.
Added to this is the “excessive media coverage” of the migration phenomenon, with “huge queues of people to obtain documentation” at the headquarters of the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), as if there were an “invasion”, instead of addressing the “inefficiency of resources”, he added.
Pedro Góis, from the University of Coimbra, went further and warned of the weakening of these communities, with the “repetition of the same images, the same places and the same people who have a different color”, as if immigration were just that, when the populations of Bangladesh, India or Nepal are minorities in the context of immigrants.
“If I always look for the same places to illustrate immigrants, and they are places that are not very obvious to citizens, this image will work as a 'loop' in the memory and we will associate migrants with these places, it could be at the door of AIMA, the Citizen's Shop, the Health Center or Rua do Benformoso”, in Lisbon, he added.
“Rua do Benformoso is not representative of immigration in the country”, because “the majority of migrants are spread across the country and are invisible, so they do not give good images”, summarized Pedro Góis.
In Portugal, “we have other examples of Benformoso streets in other communities. What is Cova da Moura if not this stereotypical representation of the Cape Verdean community in Portugal?” – he asked, considering that the Portuguese media promotes positive multiculturalism in other countries but, in Portugal, contributes to an “image of negative multiculturalism”.
And it was based on the “extrapolation of this stereotype” and from these media images about immigrants that “many Portuguese responded to our barometer”, even if “they live in Portalegre and have not seen any immigrants in recent months”.
For Pedro Góis, who is also the scientific director of the Migration Observatory, it is “necessary to have a human perspective on these human beings” and this stereotypical view “takes away their humanity”.
Therefore, the next survey will focus on the image that immigrants have of the rest of the population and the topic of media visibility will also be addressed.
Many of the racist statements heard in the media are also liable to legal punishment, because journalists are jointly responsible for visibility in the media space.
This topic “requires self-regulation and I would very much like this self-regulation to come from the journalists themselves or from the media system itself and not be imposed from outside”, added the researcher.
According to the study, presented in December, 63% of respondents want a reduction in immigrants from the Indian subcontinent, 68% of respondents consider that the “immigration policy in force in Portugal is too permissive in relation to the entry of immigrants”, 67.4% say that it contributes to more crime and 68.9% consider that it helps to keep wages low.
At the same time, 68% agree that immigrants “are fundamental to the national economy”.
In the same survey in which 42% of respondents overestimated the number of immigrants in Portugal, the majority were in favour of granting rights, such as the right to vote (58.8%), facilitating naturalisation (51.8%) or family reunification processes (77.4%).