A Decolonizing Discourse of Migration on the Web

Abstract

The discourse regarding migration, taken from the United Nations Migration Agency’s online platform “I am a migrant” (IAAM) can be considered a major resource to support the promotion of human rights. It emerges as a site of cosmo-political encounters, connectivity, and conviviality, where subjectivities are recognized, respected and re-humanized. Specifically, this study investigates the discursive and multimodal narratives of migrants in English, and the photos of themselves provided to IAAM, considering whether this type of discourse may be viewed as an act of the decolonial linguistic knocking-down of the walls of inclusion/exclusion that regulate and govern today’s migration. Within this discourse, it also detects an attitude of existence of / resistance against the hegemonic discourse of Western politics and media, and an ability to put forward a new definition of humanity on the basis of the practices of the migrant, in order to finally satisfy everybody’s understandable and legitimate freedom of movement.