Racialized Boundaries Against Haitian Immigrants in Chile: Two Case Studies

Abstract

Racism is a type of systematic power abuse by a dominant group against diverse minorities through discursive and material practices (Van Dijk, 2021). This article draws attention to the generation of racializing discourses, particularly towards the Haitian immigrant population in Chile, in (a) mass media, which mainly focuses on radio, television, and newspapers such as Radio Bíobío, Chilevision, and La Tercera newspaper, and (b) government policy, as articulated in the 2018 executive order “Plan Humanitarian Orderly Return” (PHOR). After delineating the historical background of recent Haitian migration to Chile, authors deploy Critical Discourses Analysis (CDA) of two powerful cases of popularly mediated racializing discourses reflected in media coverage of (a) the case of a Haitian woman, Joane Florvil, who died soon after taken into police custody on a wrongful charge of abandoning her infant in 2017 and (b) the racially inflected 2018 executive order PHOR which overwhelmingly targeted Haitians for “voluntary deportation”. Authors consider headlines, article coverage of institutional agents and minority subjects, and state-generated documents. Informed by postcolonial thought, the study discusses current expressions of racialized boundaries in the Chilean media focusing particularly on the disciplining and regulation of migrants based on the idea of order

Full text

ISSN: 2254-3139
Revista Internacional de Educación para la Justicia Social
2023, 12(2), 115-134.
https://doi.org/10.15366/riejs2023.12.2.007
Racialized Boundaries Against Haitian Immigrants in
Chile: Two Case Studies
Fronteras Racializadas contra Migrantes Haitianos en Chile: Dos
Casos de Estudio
Manuel Pérez-Troncoso * and Cameron McCarthy
University of Illinois, EEUU
KEYWORDS:
ABSTRACT:
Global
Migration
Racialized discourses
Critical discourses
Postcolonial theory
Racism is a type of systematic power abuse by a dominant group against diverse minorities
through discursive and material practices (Van Dijk, 2021). This article draws attention to the
generation of racializing discourses, particularly towards the Haitian immigrant population in
Chile, in (a) mass media, which mainly focuses on radio, television, and newspapers such as
Radio Bíobío, Chilevision, and La Tercera newspaper, and (b) government policy, as articulated
in the 2018 executive order “Plan Humanitarian Orderly Return” (PHOR). After delineating
the historical background of recent Haitian migration to Chile, authors deploy Critical
Discourses Analysis (CDA) of two powerful cases of popularly mediated racializing discourses
reflected in media coverage of (a) the case of a Haitian woman, Joane Florvil, who died soon
after taken into police custody on a wrongful charge of abandoning her infant in 2017 and (b)
the racially inflected 2018 executive order PHOR which overwhelmingly targeted Haitians for
“voluntary deportation”. Authors consider headlines, article coverage of institutional agents
and minority subjects, and state-generated documents. Informed by postcolonial thought, the
study discusses current expressions of racialized boundaries in the Chilean media focusing
particularly on the disciplining and regulation of migrants based on the idea of order.
DESCRIPTORES:
RESUMEN:
Global
Migración
Discursos racializados
Discursos críticos
Teoría postcolonial
El racismo es una forma de abuso de poder sistemático de un grupo dominante contra minorías
diversas a través de prácticas discursivas y materiales (Van Dijk, 2021). Este artículo analiza
discursos racializantes, particularmente hacia la población inmigrante haitiana en Chile, en (a)
medios de comunicación masivos de radio, televisión y periódicos como Radio Bíobío,
Chilevisión y el diario La Tercera, y (b) la política gubernamental, articulada en la orden
ejecutiva “Plan Humanitario de Retorno Ordenado” (PHRO). Después de delinear
antecedentes históricos de la reciente migración haitiana, los autores implementan un Análisis
Crítico de Discursos (CDA) sobre dos poderosos casos de discursos racializantes reflejados en
la cobertura de (a) el caso de una mujer haitiana, Joane Florvil, quien muere posterior a ser
detenida injustamente por el cargo de abandonar a su bebé en 2017 y (b) la PHOR, emitida en
2018, que racialmente apuntó contra haitianos para su “deportación voluntaria”. Se
consideraron titulares, cobertura de artículos sobre agentes institucionales y sujetos
minoritarios, y documentos gubernamentales. Informado por el pensamiento poscolonial, los
autores analizan expresiones actuales de bordes racializados en medios chilenos, enfocándose
particularmente en el disciplinamiento y regulación de los migrantes con base en la idea de
orden.
CÓMO CITAR:
Pérez-Troncoso, M., & McCarthy, C. (2023). Racialized boundaries against haitian immigrants in Chile: Two case studies Revista Internacional de
Educación para la Justicia Social, 12(2), 115-134.
https://doi.org/10.15366/riejs2023.12.2.007
*Contacto: manuelp4@illinois.edu
ISSN: 2254-3139
revistas.uam.es/riejs
Recibido: 1 de mayo 2022
1ª Evaluación: 16 de septiembre 2022
2ª Evaluación: 20 de marzo 2023
Aceptado: 24 de abril 2023

M. Pérez-Troncoso and C. McCarthy Revista Internacional de Educación para la Justicia Social, 2023, 12(2), 115-134
116
1. Introduction
A critical factor in understanding current developments regarding globalizing
circumstances in Chile has to do with getting a handle on the radically changing pattern
of immigration in the Americas, and in Chile in particular. It is hard to imagine present-
day patterns in globalization without linking these to current migration pathways.
Dynamic migration statistics show that foreign immigration to Chile has risen
significantly in the past two decades, from 0.81% in 1992 to 4.7% in 2017.
Furthermore, 66.7% of immigrants in Chile has arrived in just the last ten years
(National Census, 2017). This increase in the number of immigrants places enormous
pressure on domestic institutions in the host country, Chile. The media constitute one
intersectional pressure point. Historically, immigrants have been attracted to Western
Europe and the United States, but this pattern has abated somewhat in recent years.
As restrictive changes to the immigration policies of these countries continue to define
the contemporary era in the Global North, new, compensatory migration pathways are
opening up in the Global South. In that vein, Chile, despite being a peripheral economy
(Wallerstein, 2015), has a long trajectory of neoliberal economics and a consolidated
pattern of privatization that drives broader developments in the social and political
order. Indeed, the relative achievements of this model and the high HDI status of
Chile has in recent years made Chile something of a magnet for regional migration
within Latin American and the Caribbean. This is underscored by the latest statistics
from the International Organization of Migration (OIM); its most recent report
highlighted Chile as a country that has become a key destination for migration in South
America. In fact, in 2019 the percentage of immigrants in the population reached 6.7
percent (Chilean Statistics Institute [CSI], 2019). This scenario makes Chile a powerful
example of current south-south migration.
Within this new spurt of immigration in Chile, Venezuelans (23.04%), Peruvians
(17.90%), and Haitians (14.3) constitute the highest percentages of immigrants now
present in the Chilean population. Still, a particular approach is being reserved towards
the latter, unlike the largest immigration groups, and because of their skin color and
the fact that the Haitian immigrants speak French Creole more so than Spanish,
Haitians have suffered intense discriminations and racist expressions. Two powerfully
generative domains in which the racialization of Haitian immigrants occur in Chile are
those of the mass media and the venue of current government policy targeting
immigrants. This article therefore will call attention to the generation of racializing
discourses in the mass media, focusing on radio, television, and newspapers (Bío-Bío
radio, Chilevision news, La Tercera newspaper) and government policy as reflected in
the racially inflected 2018 executive order “Plan Humanitarian Orderly Return”
(PHOR) of Haitians. For it is the authors’ contention that discourses circulating in the
Chilean mass media and produced in government policy legitimize discrimination in
the wider society and facilitate the wide circulation of racist narratives regarding
Haitian people in the general public.
In what follows, we present a treatment of these racializing discourses in two case
studies. The first one evaluates the media coverage of Haitian immigrant, Joane
Florvil's police apprehension and death, soon after, in a Santiago hospital. Florvil was
unfairly arrested on August 30, 2017 and accused of abandoning her daughter. One
month after her arrest, she died in a hospital of Santiago, without a chance to see her
daughter. The second case focuses on the Plan of Humanitarian Orderly Return
(PHOR). The plan aimed to help foreign immigrants who voluntarily decided to return

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to their home countries due to problems adapting to Chilean society. The POHR
included free flights to return to Haiti, Venezuela, and Colombia on the condition that
the voluntary deportees would not come back to Chile for ten years. The POHR
provided more than 8 flights during 2018 with over 800 voluntary deportations.
Although the number of deportations was not a significant change to the migration
pattern, the POHR received heavy media coverage and was presented as an effective
measure to control immigration in Chile, depicting immigrants – mainly Haitians – as
a vulnerable group.
In seeking to unpack current dominant narratives in Chilean society that circulate
racialized representations of Haitian immigrants, the authors advance a theoretical and
methodological approach that connects postcolonial theorizing to critical discourse
analysis (CDA). Postcolonial theory is applied specifically here to reflect on the long
historical relief and present deployment of racializing practices in Chile and to inform
our uses of CDA in the evaluation of patterns of use in media representation and policy
language targeted at Haitian immigrants. Applying postcolonial theory informed by
critical discourse analysis in the cases of Joane Florvil’s media coverage and the Plan
Humanitarian Orderly Return, we will unpack sentences and key words (Alonso
Belmonte et al., 2010; Williams, 1985) that frame current discourses of racism in Chile.
In the first section, we offer a revision of dominant historical understandings of the
connection of Haitians to Latin America. This first section of the chapter outlines the
historical background to the integration of Haitian subjects into the global economy
from the beginning of capitalism through, first, a colonial economy of slavery, then
the historic first successful slave rebellion in the world, and finally, in our
contemporary times, waves of migration, that in the last ten years have increasingly
included Chile. In the second section, we foreground core concepts informing our
analysis of the scenario of new migration to Chile in which Haitian immigrants are the
key subjects of focus for racializing policies and popular resentment. In the third
section of our article, we illustrate and enact our research approach using CDA in the
evaluation of Chilean mainstream media coverage of the Florvil case and that of the
Plan Humanitarian Orderly Return policy directed at expelling Haitians immigrants
from Chile. The final section offers discussions and conclusions.
2. Postcolonial framework. Extending the analytic scope
of current Haitian immigration
Understanding what is at stake regarding racist narratives against Haitians requires an
analytical scope that begins historically prior to the current time period in which their
migration to Chile started to become prominent. One needs to link the 179,338
documented Haitians in Chile in 2019 (CSI) not only to a current diaspora spread
throughout the region because of political, economic, and natural disaster crises in
Haiti, but also to historical factors that connect and integrate Haitian diaspora subjects
to a subordinated role in the modern global system (Wallerstein, 2015).
America experienced its first contact with Spanish conquerors in the Caribbean. On
his first voyage, Columbus found the island where Haiti is located, calling it Hispaniola
(Todorov, 1982). During the first half of the sixteenth century, the extraction and
expropriation of primary resources and labor power started by the Castilian kingdom
quickly extinguished most of the native population and precipitated the use of enslaved
Africans to supply the critical labor power for the monocrop production of sugarcane
in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean basin. Thus, extractivism transformed the
Caribbean –the first region of the world controlled by Europeans– into a capitalist

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system. The region experienced then a modern identity before any other region of the
world because of “the singular structure of relation of production [called]… world
capitalism” (Quijano, 2000, pp. 535-536).
Haiti was the main French colony, and economically, it was the most prosperous in
the Caribbean region. As C. L. R James (1989) explained, the prosperity of the French
colony of Haiti supported the empowerment of French bourgeoise located first in
Nantes and then in other industrial places of France. This prosperity did not involve
social equity in the island; nevertheless, exchange of ideas between France and Haiti
was evident and pivotal.
In the early nineteenth century, the emergence of liberalism in Europe after the French
revolution influenced the foundation of the group called “Friends of Negroes” in
France. In Haiti, on the other hand, local Black intellectuals were influenced by
Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the Haitian revolution. L'Ouverture had been
educated from an early age by his godfather Pierre Baptiste, from whom he learned
French, Latin and geometry. Later on, he was also influenced by anti-slavery priest
Abbé Raynal, who advocated for rights of the human race (pp. 19-25). Thus, ideas of
liberty and natural rights in the Haitian revolution had a strong basis in such
enlightenment thoughts and philosophies.
Haiti was the second country in the Americas after the United States to achieve its
independence and was also the place of the first successful slave rebellion in world
history, according to C. L. R. James (1989). Unsurprisingly, Haitian independence was
not celebrated in Europe. In fact, the Haitian revolution was perceived as a threat by
the English empire. Lowe (2015) highlights the strong influence of the Haitian
rebellion on the English decision to suppress the slave trade and then to implement a
Chinese free labor force to avoid new slave rebellions. Such decisions show that the
Haitian revolution and use of liberal theory occupied a problematic space in the
European imagination and was the target of Eurocentric denial and disavowal, even
though Haitian leaders like Toussaint L'Ouverture drew some of their key ideas about
equality and freedom from the French enlightenment philosophes like Voltaire. In
other words, throughout history, Haiti has been a case study for any examination of
what Quijano (2000) calls the “coloniality of power”, both in the cognitive category of
race and in studies of slavery as dependent, superexploited labor in the global market
(James, 1989; Williams, 1944/1994).
Currently, Haitians carry a painful mark of racialized discrimination. For instance, in
the Dominican Republic, Haitians remain in a colonial type of labor, where patronage
is the most common system. This labor force condition is maintained and the
promotion of its extreme precarity reproduced by state laws and regulations that
consign Haitians to an undocumented legal status. The precarity of Haitian (non)
subjects is further aggravated by the absolute denial of citizenship rights even to native
born Haitians of the Dominican Republic. Haitian children cannot access birth
certificates, making them one of the largest stateless populations in the world.
Consequently, these children also endure structural discrimination in the educational
system (Bartlett et al., 2015; Coulange & Torre, 2020; UNCHR 2015). It is thus in
search of better life opportunities that Haitians have within recent years sought out a
non-traditional path to migration in journeying to Latin America.
Haitian immigration to Latin America started in 1960. But Haitians did not see South
America as a major destination until the twenty-first century. In South America, Brazil
and Chile have been the main countries chosen by Haitians. Brazil was the first
preference because of its strong economy. According to Fernandes y Gomes de Castro

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(2014), the composition of Haitian immigration is predominantly made up of male
youth, –coming from rural and urban areas in Haiti. In addition, this male migration
involves a family project as well. According to Nieto (as cited in Rojas Pedemonte,
2017), Haitians invest in a young male first, who is then expected to pull the rest of
the family to the host country. In this sense, Haitian migration illustrates a family
project– a staggered arrival to the host country similar to labor migration in other parts
of the world (Stark, 1984)
1
.
Chile showed up in Haitians' migration path after 2010 when the island experienced a
strong earthquake and the migration to Brazil showed limitations due to an economic
crisis there. Although Haitian immigrants in Chile share patterns with those
immigrating to Brazil, there are particular differences in their experience in Chile. Since
the distance between Haiti and Chile involves Haitian arrival using a plane, most
Haitians have accessed Chile using the Airport of Santiago custom bureau instead of
illegal entrances; in turn, this allows accuracy in their documentation and criminal
records (Rojas & Pedemonte, 2017). Additionally, the educational level of Haitians is
lower than that of Chileans; nonetheless, this is not an impediment to their arrival to
Chile. Haitians are able to afford the price of a flight ticket and budget to begin their
life in Chile despite the challenges posed by high cost of living; a sign that the Haitian
immigrants who arrive are not coming from the most extremely impoverished classes
in Haiti (Rojas & Pedemonte, 2017). Even though Haitians show an ordered access to
Chile, they have been exposed to more discrimination scenarios than other migrants
of Latin America (Belliard 2016; Riedemann & Stefoni, 2015). Currently, Haitians are
the third largest minority (2019 statistics) and most of them speak French creole and
not Spanish when they arrive in Chile. This puts them at a significant disadvantage and
often makes them more vulnerable than their Spanish-speaking counterparts coming
from other areas in Latin America (Bravo, 2019). Haitian workers take on jobs with
highly exploitative labor regimes and working hours. They work as many as sixty-two
hours per week for wages between $254 and $472 per month, which are extremely low
considering that in Chile minimum wage is $400 for 42 hours of work per week
(Valenzuela et al., 2014). Similar to the Dominican Republic, where patronage is the
main way for Haitians to subsist, precarious and colonial dependent labor constitutes
the main scenario of work and existence, even when, in the case of Chile, these
immigrants are unlike in case of the Dominican Republic, documented.
Another distinctive factor of Haitian immigration to Chile is that behind each Haitian
who has arrived in Chile are tracks of a historical and structural diasporic worlding of
people from several countries around the world. The global intimacy which the
Americas embody, bringing together identities from Africa, Asia, Europe, and
indigenous America, shows that immigration dynamics have a longue durée. Since
colonial times in Latin America, the movement of people within the forced and semi-
forced labor system has characterized Western modernity (Lowe, 2015; Quijano,
2000). Haitians have not been the exception. Culturally dominant classification of
Haitians in racial terms in Chile therefore serve not only to render this population of
immigrant labor manageable but to abet processes of super exploitation of their labor
power. Moreover, ambivalence regarding the treatment of Haitians underscores their
subaltern condition that must be controlled.
1
Stark analyzes international migration through the family project. Stark states that immigrant families
develop a strategic plan to achieve a safe arrival of one member of the group to the host country. Then,
the project stays alive because of interdependency between family and the immigrant through economic
transactions (Stark, 1984, cited by Rojas Pedemonte, 2017).

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It is against this historical backdrop and the persistence of extreme racialized forms
of super exploitation that we must situate and attempt to understand the circulation of
racialized narratives in the Chilean media. This is an important starting point for
evaluating the social construction and function of hegemonic discourses regarding the
present migration scenario as mediated in mainstream mass media representations and
in State immigration policy discourses. In this sense, the concept of racialized boundaries
(Fassin, 2011; Barlette et al., 2015), which we elaborate on below, supports a critical
approach to the analysis of racialized narratives developed by the media and in public
policy in Chile.
3. Core concepts
3.1. Racialized boundaries
One should understand racialized boundaries as expressions of relations of power,
which are ongoing in current global immigration. According to Fassin (2011),
racialized boundaries are generated in the social production of identities where rhetoric
and material abuses against immigrants guarantee governance of the cultural diversity
through "institutions, procedures, and reflections” (p. 214). The concept of racialized
boundaries also foregrounds the fact that racialization of aliens keeps the national
identity safe and marks a line between legal and illegal social subjects. This division
allows abuse of immigrants that is legitimized because of the state apparatus and a
discursive technology of truth, where the media are a critical actor (McCarthy &
Dimitriadis, 2005). In this sense, racialized boundaries reflect, at least in nation-state
scope, the complexity and tension generated in globalizing processes that are
embodied in the treatment of immigrants.
3.2. Discourses of resentment
The theory of discourses of resentment developed by McCarthy et al. (1998) and
anchored in racial formation theory (Omi & Winant, 2005) pays special attention to
dominant discourses produced by the white middle class in the United States.
McCarthy et al. (1998) point out the critical role of popular media in framing
contemporary race relations through simulation processes to portray difference.
Resentment discourse is the main strategy to build racialized discourses (boundaries),
which negate the Other by appealing to mainstream white emotions and moral
evaluation. Therefore, the portrayal of racial minorities (for example African
Americans and Latinos in the US and Haitians and other Global South immigrants in
Chile) in movies and the texts of the news media often near indelibly attach these
minorities to crime and violence and other forms of aberrant behavior and existence.
McCarthy et al. (1998) investigated these resentment discourses in a high school in the
inner city of Los Angeles. The research found that representations of Afro-American
and Latino students are anchored in discourses about the inner city marked by illegality.
In other words, resentment discourses limit the narratives that circulate in society
about Afro-American and Latino students to overwhelmingly negative imagery and
stereotypes. It also, more critically, delimits the control that these minority actors have
over their own life narratives. Thus, resentment is theoretically and analytically useful
for unpacking cultural policies behind racial formation processes, in this case, of Afro-
Americans and Latinos in Los Angeles.
Correlatively, as we will show, an evaluation of racial formation and resentment
discourses helps to shed light on the material conditions and sociocultural issues

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experienced by Haitians in Chile. Indeed, the racialized circumstances of the lived
experience of Haitian immigrants must be read with an eye to the transnational
context, attention to popular mass-mediated circulation of images, and to the role of
state policies towards racial difference as articulated to “global political economic
forces [that] influence states' efforts to manage diversity” (Barlette et al., 2015, p. 1156).
4. Understanding the racialized circumstances of the
Haitian immigrants in Chile: Our research approach
This study was prompted by the scarcity of research that considers race as a critical
analytical lens to examine the current immigration dynamics in Chile (Tijoux &
Palominos, 2015). Given that Haitians living in Chile are the third largest group of
immigrant minorities, and considering the postcolonial factors described above, we
focus our analysis on the treatment and representation of Haitian immigrants
conducted in mainstream news sources and state policy. Our study specifically seeks
to answer the following questions:
• What discourses dominate the representation of Haitians in Chilean
mainstream news sources when they emerge as a trending topic?
• How are these racialized narratives linked or related to a project of managing
immigrant populations in Chile, particularly the Haitian population?
4.1. Background of case studies
This research analyzes two prominent cases where Haitians have been on the national
agenda. The first case involves the news coverage of the death of Haitian immigrant,
Joane Florvil and the second focuses on the humanitarian deportation policy
articulated by the Chilean government since October 2018. The first case study is about
a single immigrant story that ended tragically. Joane Florvil was a twenty-eight-year-
old Haitian woman who could not speak Spanish. On August 30, 2017, she was unfairly
arrested after a complaint that she had abandoned her daughter
2
. While she was in
captivity, she was severely injured. Contradictory accounts exist about who was
responsible for her injuries. The day after she was arrested, Joane Florvil was carried
to a public hospital in Santiago. Tragically, after one month there, she died of a hepatic
deficiency. The Joane Florvil case is an example is of the kind of racism that Haitian
people endure in Chile.
The second case study addresses the deportation of Haitians, specifically, a plan that
the government called the Plan humanitario de retorno ordenado (Plan of orderly humanitarian
return, or from now on “POHR”). The plan aims to help foreign immigrants who
voluntarily decide to return to home countries. Furthermore, the government has
created a new migration policy, which establishes particular restrictions on Haitians,
such as the current requirement of holding a job contract before they can be allowed
to immigrate to the country (Migration Policy, 2018). The POHR case is critical to
understand racialized narratives targeted against Haitians. In the next section, we will
analyze the Joane Florvil and PHOR cases using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).
With this method, we seek to unpack particular racialized texts generated around
increased migration from Haiti and the lived and commodified experiences of Haitians
2
Five weeks after Joane Florvil’s death, the judge issued a dismissal. RBB (11/22/2017)
https://www.biobiochile.cl/noticias/nacional/region-metropolitana/2017/11/22/sobreseen-a-joane-
florvil-la-haitiana-acusada-de-abandonar-a-su-hija.shtml

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in Chile, always attentive to matters of continuity and change in broader processes that
inform national and local circumstances. We therefore apply CDA in a vigorous
dialogue with the material factors of globalization, sociocultural and ideological
reproduction and the counter hegemonic struggles that oppressed social actors must
continually launch against constraint (Fairclough, 2003).
4.2. The critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach: Methodology and
media sources
Discourse is a fundamental element in the structure and use of language that has the
particular feature of condensing information about social subjects and objects and their
stratified relationships to each other. Discourse constitutes the sinews of
representation, indexing and referencing of themes about the lived and commodified
transactions of culture in which human interests, emotional evaluation, material
organization are the critical issues at stake. Discourses circulate in social practices
interconnected with other elements of social life (Fairclough, 2003). In this sense, CDA
helps to unpack continuity and change elements at a structural level that inform and/or
govern particular contexts. Methodologically, Fairclough (2003) argues that textual
analysis should consider two dimensions to understand discourses: linguistic form and
meaning making (p. 11). The former involves the unpacking and evaluation of the text,
based on grammatic and semantic aspects. Here, Fairclough (2003) recommends the
identification of implicit and explicit meaning in the text. Moreover, this close reading
should unveil the human agency and human interests that are often disguised in text-
structures. But such meaning has to be pried open through close reading and analysis
since it is often rendered opaque and is also ideologically pasted over by the apparent
neutral facade (nominalization) of the text.
A close reading informed by CDA can identify arguments and claims where hegemonic
discourses settle their materiality (Wooffit, 2013). These hegemonic arguments can be
found through a critical analysis of inequalities because the language deployed in
mainstream media content embodies such inequalities that are gestated in the social
world and registered in the world of representation and signs. Inequalities and
asymmetries circulate in the mass media's discourses that are heavily codified in
implicit messages that have to be decoded by an audience or reader. Van Dijk defines
this process as social cognition, representing inequalities in social activities through a
theoretical interface of discourse and dominance.
In this sense, a CDA of cultural diversity embodied by immigrants, and particularly
Haitian immigrants, gathers critical information about ways in which these immigrants
are classified and culturally identified and evaluated in Chilean society. Nevertheless,
this research does not project simple transparency of meanings generated in such
media sources under examination. In fact, television studies highlight TV's tendency
to towards self-discipline, self-regulation, and self-censorship in response to
authoritative discourses of the state in order to avoid legal sanction and to better
protect their own acquisitive interests (Fiske, 2004). Assuming this powerful dynamic,
a close analysis of the representation of Haitians in the mass media takes this
complexity into account. Such analysis seeks to produce critical and richly descriptive
evaluation of the mobilization and deployment of racialized classifications and
categorizations of Haitians in media-generated discourses and media texts (Alonso
Belmonte et al., 2010; Gillborn 2000, cited in Riedemann & Stefoni, 2015, p. 6; Van
Dijk, 2012).

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4.3. Evaluating media coverage
The analysis was carried out based on the media coverage of cases in three different
media sources. The media sources studied were Bíobío Radio, a popular independent
radio station; La Tercera, a mainstream national newspaper; and Chilevision news
(CHV), a primetime television newscast. These media have rich potential for
illuminating the content and form of racialization in mediated messages because all
three of them have a national reach and influence; in contrast, other news sources and
online outlets, such as El Mostrador, El Desconcierto, and El Dinamo, target a
metropolitan audience located in Santiago. Additionally, Bíobío Radio, La Tercera, and
CHV media outlets are part of the most popular Chilean sources. They are granted
considerable popular trust with respect to the handling and dissemination of
information to and on behalf of society as a whole. The selected media outlets stand
out from more narrow casting media outlets. For example, independent digital
newspapers have developed trust journalism, but their audience is small, as most of
the time these media vehicles are located in Santiago and read only by the middle and
professional classes.
4.4. Text dissection: Headlines, contents, and actors
The examples selected were analyzed through the dissection of the main parts of news
texts: headlines, contents, and actors. First, headlines frame both the topic and global
meanings of news (Van Dijk, 2012). These headlines help to "anchor" (Barthes, 1977,
pp. 39-40) dominant or preferred readings, simplifying complex stories to key points
of emphasis that match the hegemonic interests of dominant groups in society.
Headlines therefore are not functionally "innocent". They carryout particular
ideological and cultural work that serves to stabilize normative values and discipline
populations in the interest of dominant agents and entities in society. Thus, this section
is critical to understanding keywords deployed in the representation of Haitians. This
media content generates patterns of use of language that are relevant to the evaluation
of racial asymmetries and racially marked and differentiated news coverage and public
policy. Both cases link Haitians to topics related to their adversity in Chile.
Nevertheless, the case study analysis directs attention not only to the presence of
content linked to the discursive racialization of the Haitian immigrants' adversity, but
also to the absence of content in the selected news coverage as well.
Furthermore, actors cited are relevant because of their roles as primary or secondary
sources in the outlet (Alonso Belmonte et al, 2010). In this context, by looking into
who was cited directly or indirectly it is possible to understand the way in which
Haitians are positioned in discourses and the constraints placed upon Haitian
immigrants in popular social imaginaries as they are electronically mediated; for
instance, it is possible to see who is being interviewed to report Haitians issues, how
much time is being allocated, and what length is being assigned to quotes utilized in
given media texts under analysis. These graded systems of representation register
inequalities generating in the social world. To sum up, the analysis of headlines,
contents, and actors in this research examines pathways where racialized boundaries
against Haitians are erected and persist in media coverage in Chile.
4.5. Data collection
In the first case, the scope of the search was defined by the topic “Joane Florvil”. This
helped to establish the boundaries for coverage of the material that the authors sought
related to Joane Florvil and not considering collateral news. The gathering of news
covered the period of time from her arrest in August 2017 to the day of demonstration

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against racism
3
on September 30, 2018. The number of total news entries identified
was forty-three. Of these, 35 correspond to Bío-Bío Radio, 5 to La Tercera, and 3 to
Chilevisión. Finally, the news was obtained from the search engine on the official sites
for Bío-Bío Radio and La Tercera and from the official YouTube news channel of
Chilevisión, where digital recovery provides longer samples of discourse than that
found on CHV's corporate website (see Table 1).
The deportation policy applied to Haitians that the government named “Plan of
Orderly Humanitarian Return” (PORH) was executed eight times in 2018. Obtaining
sources involved the use of a bracket coverage of time around each deportation. Unlike
the coverage of Joane Florvil's case, which appeared from a peripheral municipality
and was elevated to popular consciousness owing to several mistakes of municipal and
other institutional actors, the PORH is being led by the government through official
policies, a governmental website targeted to Haitians, and a strong media campaign.
Thus, the scope of the search started with the topic “plan of orderly return
humanitarian” and was extended to other variations of this phrase made by the news
to cover each deportation.
The widespread impact of Joane Florvil’s case and the national implication of the
PORH case offer complementary lenses to unpack meanings given by popular media
to social events and conflicts (Fairclough, 2005). Our study of these cases also develops
a critical understanding of dominant ways of thinking that reveal the intersection of
discourse and dominance (Wooffitt, 2005). In that vein, CDA is a useful critical analytic
method to trace how and where racialized boundaries are operating in the present
immigration context in Chile.
4.6. Case analysis: Joane Florvil
According to Van Dijk (2012, p. 42), “The formulation of headlines and leads reflects
the way the newspaper… frames the topics and how these organize the meaning of
the whole text”. Thus, headlines structure both the topic of the news and their global
meaning. The analysis showed that the three media outlets used Joane's name in less
than half of their headlines. Bíobío Radio did so in eleven news articles, La Tercera did
it in two of five news articles, and Chilevision did not mention it at all. Featured
headlines were the following:
Detienen a mujer acusada de abandonar a su hija de dos meses en Lo Prado
(Woman accused of abandoning her two months old daughter in Lo Prado is
arrested). RBB(8/30/2017)
Muere joven haitiana internada en Posta Central (Haitian woman dies in City
Hospital). RBB(9/9/2017)
Sobreseen a haitiana que murió tras ser acusada de abandonar a su hija
(Charges against Haitian who died after being accused of abandoning her
daughter are dismissed). LT (11/23/2017)
Villalobos dice que haitiana fallecida nunca tuvo agresiones (Villalobos [Chief
of Police] says deceased Haitian was never injured by police). LT(12/7/2017)
The absence of Florvil's name in the headlines not only functions to depersonalize
Florvil as a Haitian subject but it even more radically opens up a space were a surfeit
of negative insinuations and racialized content might flood in, displacing Haitian
3
NGOs and immigrant organizations created a “Day against racism” in Chile. This demonstration is
held on the same day of the year that Joane Florvil died. It is held to commemorate her death and to
promote immigrants’ rights.

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control over Florvil’s life narrative and those of Haitian subjects by implication. This
absence of Florvil's name embodies a process of nominalization of Haitians where the
media block chances of a humane depiction of Haitians in society objectifying them
and characterizing them as susceptible to forces of nature, problems of their own
making, and foregrounding their generalized lack of skills and competence to navigate
the Chilean context.
Another important aspect arising from the analysis is that Joane’s name is not present
during the complaint-detention-hospitalization-death cycle, and it only emerges
associated afterward with the (1) health status of her daughter in a RBB headline, and
(2) the funeral and repatriation of her body to Haiti in LT.
(1) …Bebé de Joane Florvil está en “óptimas condiciones” (Joane Florvil’s baby
is in viable condition). (RBB 10/4/2017)
(2) …el llanto fue imposible de controlar, y en compañía de su esposa Roxana
y la hermana de Joane, Samanta Florvil, repitieron una y otra vez el nombre
de Joane junto al ataúd, en una escena desgarradora (the crying was
impossible to control, and in the company of his wife Roxana and Joane's
sister, Samanta Florvil, they repeated several times Joane's name next to
the coffin, in a heartbreaking scene); “la pequeña Wildiana en brazos,
envuelta en un chal rojo que la protegía de los ojos de la gente (Little
Wildiana [Joane’s daughter] in his arms, wrapped in a red shawl that
protected her from people's eyes). (LT 5/6/2018)
From this representation, we can conclude that Joane Florvil is named only in topics
collateral to her arrest, linked only to emotional aspects of the case, and distanced from
narratives that facilitate the access to justice.
Additionally, the dominant emotional depiction of the case limited contents related to
the topic of justice in the media's overall treatment of Florvil. In the case of Bíobío
Radio's broadcast, almost all of its news is linked to the topic of justice: Joane's
detention, the prosecutor's claim, Joane's relocation, and protests by civil society
organizations. La Tercera instead referred only to the death of Florvil, reporting the
police version of events as they insisted that Joanne was not injured during her
detention. Surprisingly, CHV did not issue news to cover aspects of justice, as it only
rehashed the case through the coverage of Joane's husband retrieval of their daughter
CHV (10/2/2017) “Haitiano pide a SENAME que devuelvan a su hija (Haitian requests
SENAME [national center for the care of infants] to return his daughter )”. Ultimately,
the description shows that the absence of coverage by all three media sources seem to
reproduce what Van Dijk (2012) calls an ideologically racist discourse. This racist
discourse distances the represented group – in this case the Haitian migrant – from
issues related to power (p. 25) and places it in a representation devoid of its complexity,
thus limiting the Haitian migrant to emotional representational spaces, as explained
below.
While most of Bíobío Radio's news was related to Joane's access to justice, CHV and
La Tercera opted to portray Florvil's case through emotional contents. Indeed, La
Tercera kept the conflicts between Florvil's husband and relatives constantly in its
news. For instance, an article describes the private life and personal background of the
husband foregrounding familial conflict within the Haitian community. Then, La
Tercera reported the funeral through religious and mystical practices of Haitians,
which reinforces the view of these Haitians as having problems of communication
within their family and community. Therefore, La Tercera reinvented Joane's case by
using emotional topics that end up describing the Haitian community as one struggling
to access Chilean institutions and to communicate with each other. This negative
description of Haitians, based on Van Dijk (2012), is a discursive strategy to hide racist

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discourse and appeal implicitly to readers' knowledge so as to instill or support existing
prejudice.
Additionally, CHV developed a three-episode news item on Joane's husband's
attempts to retrieve Joane's daughter. Emotional communicational strategies were
abundant. Reports used scenes of Haitians crying, the husband's circle of friends
struggling to obtain the permission to go back home with the child, and images of
different details which the father prepared for his daughter's return to the family home.
Additionally, when the father was interviewed, his comments were short and related
to the pain of the situation. Even less news space was allotted to how to repair the
problem in the views of congressmen or NGO members. Once again CHV news
outlets portray Haitians as over-emotional. This tendency, according to Alonso
Belmonte et al. (2010) enacts a negative other-representation of the migrant in contrast
to the “positive self-presentation” of the dominant group.
The citation analysis showed that Haitians are represented in the media, but that it is
done differently from the coverage of dominant groups in society. Bíobío Radio was
the source with the highest number of Haitian quotations, citing relatives,
professionals, and organizations that advocate for Joane's justice. In contrast, La
Tercera and CHV news focused only on relatives. Additionally, the latter usually used
short, direct quotations that were expanded on by a Chilean journalist or Chilean
activist in an organization. Most of the news from these two sources focused on the
opinion of Chilean stakeholders representing the Haitian. In fact, the opinions of the
Chief of Police are the best example because they were quoted directly in the news by
both Bíobío Radio and La Tercera, without interpretation. Thus, the dominant Chilean
interpretation of Haitian issues and the very limited space allocated to interviewing
Haitians demonstrate the unequal position given to Haitians in the Media. Concisely,
Haitians have less power than other stakeholders in the media analyzed without
considering the content of the news. This powerlessness and the lack of agency of
Haitians complement the overly emotional portrayal explained above. The mediated
environment denigrating Haitian immigrants extends into the policy program and
discourses of the state. State policy articulation and media representations of
immigrants constitute a mutually reinforcing ideological subsystem. In the next
section, we apply the CDA framework to unpack the Chilean government’s articulation
of its racializing immigration policy framework towards Haitian immigrants as
illustrated in its POHR program.
4.7. The POHR case analysis
The main aspect of the POHR underscored in all analyzed sources is the media
coverage of each returning flight. In this sense, the number of Haitians who returned
in each flight and the repetition of the POHR are the most prominent features in the
analysis. It should be noted though, that the number of Haitians cited as returning is
connected with an impact or target number; nevertheless, not a single news source
stresses the percentage correlation between the number of Haitians that leave Chile in
each flight (average of 170 per flight and 840 in total) to the total Haitian population
remaining in Chile, which is less than 1% of the population of Haitians immigrants in
the country. Thus, the analysis shows that the POHR slogan repetition on media gives
it a strong media presence, even when in reality the number of Haitians returning and
remaining is statistically insignificant.
Haitians' deportation appeared in the analysis of sources in two main categories: (1)
Absence of opportunities for Haitians and (2) Order/Regulation:

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(1) Aquí no hay nada (There is nothing here). (LT 11/7/2018)
La realidad de tres haitianos que están felices por no volver a Chile en los
próximos 9 años (Reality of three haitians who are happy not coming back
to Chile in the next 9 years). (RBB 11/7/2018)
Las penurias de los haitianos que se quedaron en Chile tras ser engañados
con un cupo en el Plan de Retorno Humanitario (The hardships of the
Haitians who remained in Chile after being deceived with a vacancy in the
Humanitarian Return Plan). (CHV 11/9/2018)
(2) Ordenar la casa (Tidy up the house). (LT 4/7/2019)
Piñera acusa “desorden migratorio alarmante” en gestión de Bachelet y
subraya que pondrá orden a eso (Piñera accuses Bachelet's management of
“alarming migratory disorder” and stresses that he will put that in order).
(RBB 12/15/2018)
The portrayal of Haitians as vulnerable was significant in all analyzed sources. Media
consistently portrayed Haitians as a group that makes mistakes and endures extreme
conditions in their lived experience in Chile. This portrait of Haitians as inexperienced
and uncultivated or unsophisticated is clear on the CHV coverage described above,
which focused on the seemingly deceived Haitians who were not able to take the first
airplane. However, the precarious conditions of life and the hapless nature of existence
predominated in the discourse on POHR and its impact on Haitian immigrants. La
Tercera announced “Aquí no hay vida” (There is no life here) to describe the struggle
of some Haitians to learn the Spanish language, to face the cold weather in the winter,
to afford decent housing, and to find a job (Navarrete, 2018). More interesting was the
use of precarities by government authorities to justify the POHR as a humanitarian
action instead of a state policy. For instance, Alvaro Bellolio, Director of the Migration
Office, defines the POHR as humanitarian help for people (Haitian immigrants) who
were deceived into coming to Chile (CHV, December 17, 2018). This view was also
held by Andrés Chadwick, Minister of the Interior, who claimed that "Haitians were
not able to adapt to Chilean reality and they did not find fair conditions to live here…so
the president heard Haitians and offered them this humanitarian plan” (CHV,
November 7, 2018). This seemingly humanitarian stance puts the government actions
regarding the Haitian return policy within a charitable discourse while casting Haitian
immigrants as culturally impoverished and too unsophisticated to navigate life
demands in Chile. The official document that the government issued for the
humanitarian plan (CHV, November 7, 2018) states the following:
Se hace indispensable atender a la situación planteada por las comunidades
migrantes de aquellas personas que se encuentran en situación de vulnerabilidad,
por no haber logrado una eficaz integración, sustentabilidad o regularidad en el
país, por razones laborales, idiomáticas, socioculturales (It is essential to address
the situation claimed by the migrant communities of those persons who are in a
situation of vulnerability, for not having achieved an effective integration,
sustainability or regularity in the country, for labor, language, sociocultural
reasons). (p. 1)
The government's use of the language of exception and urgency of intervention –
giving as evidence Haitian vulnerability and lack of viability – effectively deploys moral
evaluation, displacing by its ideological effects any notion or benchmark of human
rights that is required by international convention and law. Additionally, the
exceptional circumstances that the government invokes complements a sense of
urgency to control immigrant populations in the country. The President stated
…Todo país tiene derecho a decidir, como explícitamente lo reconoce el Comité
de DDHH de Naciones Unidas, qué migrante y bajo qué condiciones puede
ingresar a su territorio (Every country has the right to decide, as the United

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Nations Human Rights Committee explicitly recognizes, which migrants can
enter its territory under what conditions). (RBB, 12/15/2018)
Here, this discourse links immigrants to an implied culpability in the imagined loss of
the Chilean sovereignty. This is underscored in President Piñera's refusal to sign the
Global Compact for Migration by arguing that this pact: “complica la protección de
nuestras fronteras y limita la soberanía chilena para tomar decisiones en temas de
migración (complicates the protection of our frontiers and limits Chilean sovereignty
to make decisions on migration aspects)” (Reyes, 2018). In that vein, La Tercera echoes
the president's tone in order to defend the government's rejection of the migratory
pact (Ahumada, 2018) and Bíobío Radio points to a survey where 85% of Chileans
support the government's immigration policies (Muñoz, 2018). Therefore, this control
of immigrants is ideological and cultural dominant that underscores how hegemonic
interests are materialized in the nominalization (Fairclough, 2003) of a strong anti-
migrant stance hidden behind the façade of humanitarianism.
Lastly, actors in the coverage of the POHR were diverse. Haitians were quoted in
several occasions by all sources. In fact, La Tercera provided an interview where
Haitians are the only ones to frame the news. Similarly, Bíobío Radio included Haitians
through interviews with spokespersons for NGOs, such as Lyne Francois of
Organization of Haiti in Chile (Vera, 2018). However, government authorities
obtained prime coverage in the news sources analyzed here. Most of the discourses
about Haitians as a vulnerable community were expressed during the coverage of each
airplane's returns, where Haitians were presented in on the side and through small
quotes. Additionally, spokespersons from the Haitian NGO, representatives from the
Jesuit immigrant service, and a university professor were quoted, extending the
immigrant phenomenon to global issues (RBB, 11/22/18):
las miles de personas que escapan de la guerra y solicitan refugio en Europa, la
actual caravana migrante que se dirige desde Centro América hacia Estados
Unidos o la comunidad migrante haitiana en Chile, son casos que ponen en tela
de juicio los valores democráticos y éticos de estos países (thousands of people who
flee from war and seek refuge in Europe, the current migrant caravan that is
headed from Central America to the United States or the Haitian migrant
community in Chile, are cases that call into question the democratic and ethical
values of these countries). (Iska Pavez-Soto, RBB 11/22/2018)
Similar to the situation in the Joane Florvil's case, Haitians as a subject are taken out
of the main contents to locate them in a peripheral place in the coverage.
Collectively, analysis of both case studies served as evidence of the ideological
reproduction of a hegemonic discourse through the media (Fairclough, 1993). The
Chilean media played a structural role in the portrayal of Haitians as a vulnerable
community against whom abuses can be naturalized or justified. Furthermore, in both
cases, Florvil and POHR, the use of emotionally and morally evaluative language to
discuss Haitians served as another way to describe their inequalities through racialized
arguments. In fact, following Van Dijk (2012), emotionally and morally laden
discourses reinforced a paternalist perspective which blocked chances to see injustices
endured by Haitians and find options and solutions for change. In the discussion and
conclusion section that follows, the following three findings will be developed: a)
attention will be paid to the migration regulation discourse of the government; b) the
insistent portrayal of Haitians as a vulnerable community will be underscored and
discussed further; and c) the contradictory treatment of Haitians by the state apparatus
will be further examined. These findings show where racialized boundaries are visible
and particularly suited for postcolonial analysis.

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5. Discussion
The analysis of media sources shows that dominant cultural groups in Chile have
reacted negatively to the cultural differences presented by Haitian immigrants, often
with discriminatory forms of representation and practices. Three racialized discourses
emerged throughout this analysis of news sources: the idea of the urgent need for order
and to regulate migrant populations, the portrait of Haitians as a vulnerable group of
people that imposes liabilities on the state and society, and the ambivalent treatment
of Haitians by the state apparatus.
5.1. Migratory regularization based on the idea of order
To begin with, migratory regularization was discussed in two major contexts; the
government's refusal to sign the Global Compact for Migration and the
implementation of POHR. The former addresses the nationalist discourse of rule and
order. Former President Piñera maintains, tendentiously, that Chilean sovereignty and
frontiers are threatened by this pact “[The migratory pact] complicates the protection
of our frontiers and limits Chilean sovereignty to make decisions on migration aspects”
(Reyes, 2018). Piñera makes this claim even though the international migratory pact
agreements do not involve any compromise of national sovereignty. This official
discourse seems so distant from the charitable-sounding POHR discourse analyzed in
the media sources. Still, both cases are connected; thereby, immigrants, particularly
Haitians, occupy a place of otherness within the hegemonic discourse of rule and
order.
The idea of rule and order has a deep foundation in the imaginary of the Chilean
establishment. It is not hard to find examples of this. The national emblem includes
the phrase “por la razón o la fuerza (for the reason or force)”. During the nineteenth
century the idea of order in the Portales regime was the main legacy of the new
republic. The last dictatorship in 1973 justified human rights violations through the
principle of order. Precisely in the current episode of migration in Chile, Haitians
emerge as the symbolic Other, rather than other Latin American immigrants, due to
their skin color and Creole languages. Therefore, the regulation of immigrants occupies
an important place in this imaginary of order; drawing a line between legal and illegal
people (Fassin, 2011) continually reinforces racialized boundaries that keep the
national identity of Chileans safe. This process repeatedly denies Haitians' equal
position in society by appealing to emotions and moral evaluation in the mobilization
of resentment (McCarthy et al., 1998). This disavowal tends to be normalized through
the explicit nationalist messages made by Chilean authorities described below.
5.2. A Portrait of Haitians as a Vulnerable Group of People
As in the case of POHR, vulnerability of Haitians is reflected through a discourse of
charity. POHR maintains a charitable façade that is attached to state responsibility,
omitting analysis regarding the amount of funds and resources that are being actively
deployed by the state in its efforts to achieve its policy objectives regarding POHR. In
government offices alone, the POHR involves networks between the migration office,
the interior ministry, and the civil police, and the deployment of authorities who earn
political capital with their public support of each flight. Thus, the POHR's use of
arguments embedded in discourses of benevolence and charitability releases the
government from responsibility for the negative impacts of its migration policies on
Haitians and allows it to build up popular support within the Chilean public.

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In the case of Joane Florvil, the charitable argument was complemented with an
insistent portrait of Haitians as a vulnerable community. Media coverage of Joane
Florvil's case focused on peripheral topics instead of on her detention and the justice
process. For instance, narratives of adversity, such as arguments between Joane's
husband and relatives, the absence of job opportunities, and the debatable ability of
Haitians to adapt to the winter portrays the creole community in a narrow public light.
This cultural representation of Haitians through adversity requires a powerful
concentration of affect or strategic use of emotion and moral evaluation (McCarthy et
al 1998, p. 204). Overall, portraying Haitians as vulnerable in both cases acquires an
intertextual level that heavily influences the media audience. Still, discourses of
vulnerability alone do not explicitly address racism. The vulnerable representation of
Haitians instead works as an interface between discourse and dominance left to be
decodified by the audience (Van Dijk, 2012).
5.3. Ambivalent Treatment of Haitians by the State Apparatus
The ambivalence and contradictory nature of state policy discourses targeted at
Haitians is evident in both cases. The Joane Florvil case illustrates examples of
systematic discrimination and unfair treatment by several government bureaus. This
discrimination appeared in the news seemingly as an attempt to rectify her treatment.
For instance, the chief of police had to explain that "deceased Haitian [Joane Florvil]
was never injured by police" (LT, 12/7/2017) when dismissing her case: "(The Haitian
[Joane Florvil] who died after being accused of abandoning her daughter is acquitted
of all charges" (LT, 11/23/2017).
Moreover, in the case of the POHR, the official claim is that fair and expedient
treatment was extended to Haitians who decided to return to Port-au-Prince. News
coverage highlights this sense of efficiency in interviews with authorities. For instance,
mayor of Estación Central, Rodrigo Delgado, states that “se han dado todas (por la
oficina de migración) las garantías para que las personas… tengan prioridad en el
próximo vuelo (all guarantees have been given [by the migration office] in order that
these people have priority in the next flight” [LT, 11/8/2018]). The analyses, however,
of the evidence in the Joane Florvil and POHR cases underscore inconsistencies and
contradictions. Further, it puts into sharp critical relief the policy language and
espoused commitments on the part of the state and dominant authorities that claim
fairness and even handedness, even as these same discourses depict Haitians as lacking
the necessary viable skills and rightful claims to citizenship.
This condition of exception of the law (Fassin, 2011) enables the bureaucracy to create
deliberately contradictory and two-faced treatment of Haitians, claiming magnanimity
on the one hand while in effect enforcing expulsions on the other. The state apparatus,
therefore, plays a critical role in what Fassin (2011) describes as exceptional treatment.
This is a deeply racializing approach that operates outside the law and allows for the
reproduction of racial discrimination and racial inequality. Through state complicity,
Haitians are the targets of systematic and structurally rooted discrimination and
marginalization. The Chilean government executed its POHR policy, signaling to the
Chilean public that it was managing the unwanted Haitian migrant population in the
country, even when it was evident that these immigrants were being returned to a
country in the throes of prolonged economic and political crisis. The seemingly
benevolent act of the government and its claim to be implementing humanitarian
deportation rhetorically and strategically ignore the historical context and present
circumstances of Haitian immigrants. The logic of this belies the political and moral

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ground on which the state seeks to stand for its policies that are having a cruel impact
on the well-being and fortunes of Haitian people seeking a better future in Chile.
6. Conclusion
To conclude, this analysis has shown that despite the fact that immigration to Chile
comes from several countries of Latin America, discourses of Haitian immigrants are
particularly and heavily anchored in racist assumptions. Definitely, other
underestimated groups in Chilean society, such as Mapuches indigenous have endured
racism; however, scholarly analysis has paid scarce attention to racism to understand
the conflict between Mapuches and the Chilean state (Correa, 2016). In this sense, the
analyzed discourses stress the role of racism and the racialization of Haitian immigrants
in dominant sectors in Chilean society; the mass media and the state are interrelated
institutional sites that persistently aid in the production of racializing discourses.
Narratives of order, vulnerability, and the exceptional (ambiguous) predominate in the
mass media and government generated discourses. They enter into and draw on the
commonsense values circulating in the national popular. Through cultural artifacts,
such as those in mainstream media analyzed here, representations of Haitians provoke
moral evaluation and the perception of Haitian immigrants as threats to a nascent
Chilean national identity, itself rooted in Chile's own experience as a colony. In
Anderson's terms (1983), the nation-identity involves an imagined pristine political
community anchored by a limited sovereignty that, in the Chilean case, that invokes
and affirms Eurocentric whiteness and rationalizes inequality. Racial affiliations, racial
identities are volatile and socially kinetic forces that are powerfully articulated to
differentiated material resources and structural realities and express themselves in
racially variant and variable social roles, statuses, and opportunities (Quijano, 2000).
As with other groups of immigrants, Haitians search for real opportunities to achieve
social mobility for their families, in ways similar to transnational projects of migration
embodied by people from other Latin American countries and by peoples throughout
the Global South. Haitian migration projects are complex and involve familial factors,
such as familial economic investment, intermediary or higher educational certification,
and local strategies to be negotiated in host countries (Rojas & Pedemonte, 2017).
Particularly in this way, Haitians become representatives of human mobility in the most
challenging of global economic times, eager to partake in Chilean society.
Nevertheless, the agency and perseverance of Haitian immigrants challenge Chilean
understanding of cultural diversity. Haitian immigrant presence in Chile is often
understood through a sense of competitive threat and moral panic. It provokes the
production of racialized discourses that construct boundaries to protect the national
identity. In this sense, the reader should consider the depictions of Haitians as
vulnerable subjects, the connection of ideas of order with whiteness, and the
ambiguous government treatment of Haitians as discursive elements designed to
manage cultural diversity, which already so structurally racializes Chilean society. At
this point, general questions arise: how do these discourses render invisible extractive
practices of super exploitation of labor in Chile? How can studying education through
the intersection of race, class and gender offer a chance to understand or transform
schools themselves?
As Tijoux and Palominos (2015) maintain, racism in Chile has been underestimated in
research related to the migratory process. Thus, the idea of order, the ambivalent
treatment of Haitians by the state apparatus, and the production of a vulnerable
portrait of Haitian subjects arise as critical sites where racialized boundaries are

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predominant. Particularly, this analysis calls attention to and focuses examination and
exploration of these racialized boundaries in educational settings. Schools are places
where these discourses can be analyzed by unpacking daily interactions between local
stakeholders, such as students, parents, teachers, and principals. Moreover, educational
policies in Chile fail to consider immigrants in a framework that accounts for cultural
diversity. Indeed, racialized boundaries have remained invisible, in part, because
educational researchers have not taken seriously the racialized discourses re-produced
in schools. Finally, postcolonial studies in education allow for exploring historical
formations of racism and inequalities by the way that they investigate current
expressions anchored in global contexts; therefore, Haitians immigrants present us
with a unique migration trajectory that urgently needs to be studied in order to establish
and support new voices in Chile, critique the assumption of whiteness anchored in the
idea of a Chilean race, and finally, to understand how current hegemonic globalization
acquires local meanings in educational settings.
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Annex 1
Table 1
New sources analyzed according to each media
Radio Biobío
Chilevision
La Tercera
Number of news
A
*35
3
5
B
**28
7
9
Note. (*) The Joane Florvil case; (**) the POHR case.
Brief CV of the authors
Manuel Pérez-Troncoso
Ph.D. candidate in Educational Policies, Organization & Leadership at the University
of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His dissertation both unpacks and undoes Western and
colonial deficit perspectives to address cultural diversity in education marked by South-
South migration patterns in northern Chile. He develops the notion of "immigrant
pedagogies” to explain daily life lessons of northern Chile immigrant students and their
mothers to navigate scenarios of marginalization. Also, he is part of an NSF research
project exploring scientist pathways of underrepresented islanders to navigate STEM
careers in Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Guam and Micronesia states. Email:
manuelp4@illinois.edu
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0170-6916
Cameron McCarthy
Communications Scholar and University Scholar in the Department of Educational
Policy, Leadership and Organization (EPOL) and in the Institute of Communications
Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor McCarthy
teaches courses in globalization studies in education, postcolonialism, mass
communications theory and cultural studies at his university. His latest co-authored
books include the award-winning Class Choreographies, Elite Schools and
Globalization (Palgrave, 2018) and Spaces of New Colonialism (Peter Lang, 2020).
Email: cmccart1@illinois.edu
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5687-7918