Discursive construction of the Venezuelan migratory crisis from the Chilean press

Abstract

In Chile, between 2016 and 2021, the rise in Venezuelan immigration became a major public concern, sparking political responses from the governments in power and shaping media narratives that turned the phenomenon into a discursive event. Both Michelle Bachelet and Sebastián Piñera implemented measures to regulate human mobility and promote a new immigration law to replace Decree Law No. 1094 of 1975. In this context, the term crisis—primarily used by political actors and the press to characterize Venezuelan immigration—took on a negative connotation in public opinion.This paper examines how the Chilean press constructed the issue of the migration crisis in news coverage from 2016 to 2021, focusing on the national newspapers Emol and La Tercera, as well as the regional newspapers La Estrella de Arica and La Estrella de Iquique. Using a socio-semiotic approach and critical discourse analysis, the study uncovers a discursive structure that generates discriminatory, criminalizing, and dehumanizing representations of Venezuelan immigration. These portrayals exaggerate social and cultural differences while reducing the complexity of migration to a state security threat. The results indicate that the thematic focus, language, and key actors shaping the discourse on Chile’s migration crisis have turned this concept into a strategic tool for steering public debate primarily toward legislative frameworks aimed at immigration control, rather than fostering discussions on comprehensive public policies. As a result, this approach restricts intercultural recognition in the face of increasingly unavoidable human mobility.