Episode 17

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Published on:

14th Feb 2025

Why The Media Gets Migration Wrong

Suchitra, Bhakti, and Madhuri dissect the persistent failures of media coverage on migration, exposing how mainstream outlets reinforce state narratives rather than challenging them. From the selective sympathy extended to Ukrainian refugees to the criminalization of Black and Brown migrants, the hosts examine how race, class, and geopolitical interests shape reporting. They trace the media’s historical complicity in dehumanizing migrants and explore the political incentives behind the language of “legal” and “illegal” migration.

This episode unpacks the realities of forced deportations, ICE raids, and the bipartisan commitment to border enforcement, revealing how liberal and conservative media alike obscure the violence of immigration policies. What does it mean when the media celebrates the same border policies under Biden that are then condemned under Trump? Why do countries that welcome Ukrainian refugees reject brown and Black asylum seekers? And how does the language of “national security” mask racialized violence at the border? This episode examines how the media serves as a megaphone for state power rather than a force for accountability.

Key Takeaways

  • Migration reporting is deeply racialized. Ukrainian refugees were framed as “deserving” and “civilized,” while Black and Brown migrants are criminalized or reduced to statistics.
  • The bipartisan myth of humane immigration policies. While Trump’s ICE raids were met with media outrage, Biden’s administration has quietly overseen mass deportations—without the same level of scrutiny.
  • Journalists insist on an allegiance to paperwork, documentation and to legal frameworks when it comes to migration but reject those same ideas when it comes to something like Palestine. 
  • The fetishization of migrant culture coexists with anti-migrant policies. The West embraces “authentic” migrant food and literature but enacts violent border enforcement against the people who create them.
  • Migration is an economic and colonial issue, not just a legal one. The US and Europe continue to destabilize nations through war, climate destruction, and economic policies, then criminalize those displaced by these conditions.
  • Journalists are complicit. The media amplifies state narratives on “illegal immigration” while failing to investigate the broader systemic causes of displacement.

Keywords

Migration, deportation, ICE raids, sanctuary cities, media complicity, refugee crisis, asylum seekers, Biden immigration policy, Trump, Guantanamo, Haitian migrants, Venezuelan refugees, Palestinian displacement, media literacy, national security narratives, climate migration, colonial borders.


Hosted by Suchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure, and Madhuri Sastry

A podcast by The Polis Project www.thepolisproject.com

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About the Podcast

It's Not You, It's The Media
Resist media gaslighting
It's Not You, It's The Media! unpacks the ways that the media manipulates narratives and makes you question your reality. You're being gaslighted. Suchitra Vijayan, Bhakti Shringarpure and Madhuri Sastry eviscerate the propaganda, set the record straight and offer moral clarity.

Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer and activist. She is the founder and Executive Director of The Polis Project. For her first book, The Midnight's Border: A People's History of India, Suchitra traveled across the 9000-mile Indian border. A barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is the co-author of How Long Can the Moon Be Caged? Voices of Indian Political Prisoners (2023) which offers a lens into today's India through the lived experiences of political prisoners.

Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer and editor. She is the co-founder of Warscapes magazine which transitioned into the Radical Books Collective, a multi-faceted community building project that creates an alternative, inclusive and non-commercial approach to books and reading. Bhakti is the author of Cold War Assemblages: Decolonization to Digital (2019) and editor of Literary Sudans: An Anthology of Literature from Sudan and South Sudan (2017), Imagine Africa (2017) Mediterranean: Migrant Crossings (2018) and most recently, Insurgent Feminisms: Writing War (2023).

Madhuri Sastry is a former lawyer, specializing in international and human rights law. She was the publisher of Guernica Magazine. Her political writing, cultural criticism, interviews and essays have appeared in several publications including The Nation, Guernica, Slate, Bitch and New York Magazine. She is on the editorial board at the Polis Project.