As part of the CULTMED project, CULTURELINK – The Centre for Research in Cultural Policy, Development and Cooperation is inviting you to the third lecture within the Culturelink Guest Lecture Series, which will be held on Monday, June 16, 2025, at 4 p.m. in the library of the Institute for Development and International Relations. Croatian sociologist Helena Popović will hold a lecture entitled ‘Media hunting migrants: racialized representations of migrants in Croatian media’.
The presentation problematises cultural and media diversity from an empirical perspective. It relates to the research results on media representations of migrants in Croatian national, regional and local media (Popović, Kardov, Župarić-Iljić). The database was created within the project ‘INCLuDE – Intersectoral Cooperation in the Empowerment of Third-country Nationals’ project, co-financed by the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund and implemented by the Government Office for Human Rights and Rights of National Minorities of the Republic of Croatia (2020-2022).
When analyzing the media representations of migrants, it is noticeable that innovative distinctions are being constructed, attempting to simultaneously stop migration at the borders and integrate desirable profiles of refugees who are resettled in local communities within the European resettlement program. This is occurring, mainly as a result of the strategic orientation of national migration policies on the margins of Schengen. It implies the discursive “carving out” differences between the “threatening migrant” and the “genuine refugee”, while the “asylum seeker” is in a type of limbo.
Because migrants are discursively constructed as threatening Others, they cannot be included in the symbolic order of the national community, therefore, they ideologically represent what the national community is not, which enables the construction of migrants in contrast to the normative sociocultural characteristics of Croatian identity, resulting in a racialised discourse.
Initially, unequal positions are constructed through national and racial registers of culture, representing migrants as uncivil savages, foreigners and as animals targeted for hunting. Differences are regularly negatively evaluated, referring to cultural practices, customs, language and other characteristics, depicting them as culturally radically different species. These groups are constructed as culturally incompatible, as they have different traditions, lifestyles and mechanisms of bodily and biological processes. The constructed traits and differences are a part of a neo-racist discourse operating as an extension of old biological exclusivities.
The research resulted in the following publications:
- Popović, Helena: Kardov, Kruno; Župarić-Iljić, Drago. (2022). Medijske reprezentacije migracija: Diskurzivne konstrukcije migranata, izbjeglica i tražitelja azila u hrvatskim medijima. Zagreb: Ured za ljudska prava i prava nacionalnih manjina Vlade RH.
- Popović, Helena, Župarić-Iljić, Drago, Kardov, Kruno. (2022). “Nas nitko niš’ ni’ pital”: Medijske reprezentacije slučaja pokušaja uspostave prihvatilišta za tražitelje azila kod Petrinje [“Nobody Asked Us a Thing”: Media Representations of the Attempt to Establish an Accommodation Centre for Asylum Seekers near Petrinja]. Revija za sociologiju/Croatian Sociological Review, Vol. 52, No. 2, str. 153-181.
- Kardov, Kruno i Popović, Helena. (2025). „Kinegetička moć i mediji. Lovački diskurs u medijskim izvještajima o iregulariziranim migrantima“. Socijalna ekologija, Vol. 34, no. 1. (forthcoming).
We kindly ask you to register by e-mail to: kultura@irmo.hr. The lecture will be held in Croatian.
