In their shoes? Categorizing identities and creating citizens in refugee reality TV
Date Issued
2019-10-14
Author(s)
van der Waal, Margriet
Abstract
The so-called migration crisis in Europe is not only covered by serious informative genres such as news and documentaries, but has also been the topic of entertainment genres such as reality TV. This article focuses on two cases of European ‘refugee’ reality TV in which European participants embark on a ‘reversed’ refugee journey: from the Netherlands and Germany, respectively, to war-torn countries in Africa and the Middle East. Despite the shows’ claims to fulfill an important function of educating the broader public about the hardship and plight experienced by refugees in Europe, the construction and conception of collective cultural identities in these shows warrants closer analysis. Through an interpretative textual analysis of the series, we investigate how civil belonging is mapped and constructed by the series as a range of different subject positions on refugees and civic responsibility toward refugees. This study problematizes the manner in which a plurality of voices is accommodated in contemporary European liberal democratic society and how cultural forms such as reality TV function normatively as a technology of citizenship.
Subjects
Cultural citizenship
;
docutainment
;
entertainment
;
migration
;
reality television
;
refugees
Publisher
Sage
Institution
Type
journal article
Journal/Edited collection
European Journal of Cultural Studies
ISSN
1460-3551
Band
24
Issue
1
Start page
314
End page
332
Secondary publication
Yes
Document version
Postprint
Language
English
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
Van der Waal_Boehling_In their shoes_Categorizing identities and creating citizens in refugee reality TV_2019_accepted-version.pdf
Size
1.38 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):96a6e8c95d28004a8dc049515d4297b3