Social representations of immigration and immigrants in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese media

Based on the Theory of Social Representations, this study aimed to identify and analyze the social representations of immigration and immigrants in three European countries’ newspapers: in Portugal, Correio da Manhã; in Spain, El Mundo and in Italy, La Repubblica. The database was created considering only the news that referred to the context of migration in Europe. The data were analyzed through lexical analysis via Alceste software. The results show that social representations of immigration and immigrants are ambiguous when referring to the immigrants as necessary to the labor context at those countries at the same time that judge the immigration processes as guilt for the social disorder. This composition guides practices that legitimize negative elements, which distinguish the European hegemonic group’s internal and external border from the migrant group.