Dialectics of exclusion/inclusion and the naturalization of bonded labour : media representations of migrant workers in Canadian mainstream media

This research examines the ways in which migrant workers are represented in mainstream Canadian news print press. In particular, representations of domestic workers and farm workers are the focus of analysis. This analysis is helpful in revealing the extent to which Canadian nation-state interests, including neo-liberalism and nationalist multicultural sentiment, are articulated within the discourses of the mainstream newsprint media. Emphasized is how neo-liberalism operates within a nation-state where the dominant discourse of multiculturalism is predominant. Overall this research demonstrates that the acceptance of migrant workers is conditional. This type of acceptance is characterized by their limited existence as economic participants in the Canadian economy, and their especially oppressed experiences as social and political participants. Overall this research demonstrates that within the mass media, as one component in the larger discourses of neo-liberal capitalism and multicultural tolerance, the subjectivity and agency of migrant workers goes hugely unrecognized.