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This dissertation examines how migration and development narratives are (re)produced in transnational digital migrant
media using an example of Kenyan migration to Europe, as its main sociological question. It also raises questions about
existing gaps in the literature on the role of the media specifically, transnational digital migrant media in constructing
influential discourses. It achieves this quest by submitting to an objective to examine the contribution of migrant media
discourses to development in migration-sending countries (De Haas, 2007). Using postcolonial-discourse theoretic
approach, the thesis analyses the criteria for selection of texts on migration and development, and how the texts inform the
discourse. It establishes that postcolonialism is prevalent in European social research, but limited to justifying historical
occurrences and re-writing wrongs done to Africans and others formerly colonized. The theoretical concepts of development
in this thesis follow Arturo Escobar’s (1995) deconstruction of conventional development theory. It includes an appreciation
of multi-faceted theoretic dynamics, especially historical effects on development and creation of hegemonic disparities
causing migration of Kenyans to Europe. The dissertation explores the relation of liberal development narratives to
Postcolonial perspectives of Edward Said (1977), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1986) and Homi Bhabha (1983), whose
writings expose stereotypes like those found in development constructs. This dissertation highlights similar aspects of
representations of migration and development in the media. It does not only expose migrant’s contribution to development
but accentuates the discourse forming function of migrant media in the production of heterogeneous narratives on migration
and development. This reflection is an attempt to look at possibilities of alternative development trajectories in migrant
media and Postcolonial texts, that resist neo-colonial economic narratives forced on people of African descent. The findings
for this thesis show that migrant media provides hegemonic ideas on development, as well as alternative counterhegemonic
views. Hence, development in modern Africa since self-determination in the 1950s and 1960s continues to
furnish the media’s socio-economic and political discourse. Even though poverty and political instability of Africa
characterize narratives in the mainstream media, migrant media utilizes new media platforms for “subalterns” to be heard.
Migrants’ inputs on development (re)produced in migrant media, inform a discourse that champions initiatives aimed at
improving livelihoods in migration-sending countries. To answer the main sociological question on (re)production of
narratives this dissertation learns from Norman Fairclough’s (1995, 2012) guidelines to discourse analysis, as informed from
Michel Foucault’s (1980) theoretic approach. As a qualitative research strategy, the dissertation explores Texts from
transnational digital migrant media for Kenyans in Europe (Germany and UK) and expert interviews with Kenyan media
producers in Germany and in Britain. On this basis, the thesis argues that not only are media expert’s contributors to
development but are also important creators of a discourse that qualifies migration as a reality in Kenya’s development. |
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