STRANGENESS AND IDENTITIES Human rights, citizenship and migrant subject Representations of Migrants in Texts

Abstract

This text deals with migration and emphasizes questions related to human rights and citizenship. It combines reflections and research into newspaper articles, focusing basically on headlines published between early 2003 and February 2004. Newspaper headlines that indicate contradictory but complementary movements are classified at the end of the article: to wit, a wide variety of voices and the assumption by locals, especially in the United States and Europe, of sentiments against the other, the migrant, countered by the growth of sympathetic movements and protests, often led by the migrants themselves. Besides indications from the media, literary essays are presented to indicate how the concepts of migrant and foreigner take on different meanings. Finally, the concept of strangeness is used to discuss the concept of strangeness an question the borderline between migrants and natives.