This book proposes a new approach to the study of discourse in documentary film. It considers discourse as a basic factor of translation (as well as contexts, agents, and practices) and draws on the parallels between the disciplines of translating and documentary making to perform a discourse analysis of documentaries centering on migration. By relying on the concept of translation as a heuristic tool, the author highlights the discursive mechanisms of 18 documentaries on Latin American migration shown in the United States by the Public Broadcasting Service series POV between 1996 and 2018. This interdisciplinary approach facilitates a holistic analysis of documentary film discourse, while also raising awareness of positive discourses of migration. The book will be of interest to students and scholars involved in the study of discourse, translation, documentary, television, and migration.

This book proposes a new approach to the study of discourse in documentary film. It considers discourse as a basic factor of translation (as well as contexts, agents, and practices) and draws on the parallels between the disciplines of translating and documentary making to perform a discourse analysis of documentaries centering on migration. By relying on the concept of translation as a heuristic tool, the author highlights the discursive mechanisms of 18 documentaries on Latin American migration shown in the United States by the Public Broadcasting Service series POV between 1996 and 2018. This interdisciplinary approach facilitates a holistic analysis of documentary film discourse, while also raising awareness of positive discourses of migration. The book will be of interest to students and scholars involved in the study of discourse, translation, documentary, television, and migration.

Images have become an integral part of the political regulation of migration: they help produce categories of legality versus illegality, foster stereotypes, and mobilize political convictions. Yet how are we to understand the relationship between these images and the political in the discourse surrounding migration? How can we, as anthropologists, migration scholars, or documentary filmmakers visually represent people who are excluded from political representation? And how can such visual representations gain political momentum? This volume not only considers the images that circulate with reference to migrants or draw attention to those that accompany, show, or conceal them. The book explores the phenomena of migration with the help of images. It offers an in-depth analysis of the documentary approaches of Ursula Biemann, Renzo Martens, Bouchra Khalili, Silvain George, Raphael Cuomo and Maria Iorio, Alex Rivera, and Rania Stepha, which evoke the particularities of migrant lifeworlds and examine urgent questions regarding the interrelations between politics and poetics, mobility and mediation, and the ethics of probability and possibility. The author also discusses his own cinematic practice in the making of Tell Me When (2011), A Tale of Two Islands (2012), and Intimate Distance (2015), a trilogy of films that explore the potential to communicate the bodily, spatial, and temporal dimensions of the experience of migration.

What are the influences that govern how people view their worlds? What are the embedded values and practices that underpin the ways people think and act? Discourses We Live By approaches these questions through narrative research, in a process that uses words, images, activities or artefacts to ask people – either individually or collectively within social groupings – to examine, discuss, portray or otherwise make public their place in the world, their sense of belonging to (and identity within) the physical and cultural space they inhabit. This book is a rich and multifaceted collection of twenty-eight chapters that use varied lenses to examine the discourses that shape people’s lives. The contributors are themselves from many backgrounds – different academic disciplines within the humanities and social sciences, diverse professional practices and a range of countries and cultures. They represent a broad spectrum of age, status and outlook, and variously apply their research methods – but share a common interest in people, their lives, thoughts and actions. Gathering such eclectic experiences as those of student-teachers in Kenya, a released prisoner in Denmark, academics in Colombia, a group of migrants learning English, and gambling addiction support-workers in Italy, alongside more mainstream educational themes, the book presents a fascinating array of insights. Discourses We Live By will be essential reading for adult educators and practitioners, those involved with educational and professional practice, narrative researchers, and many sociologists. It will appeal to all who want to know how narratives shape the way we live and the way we talk about our lives.

The Migration and Politics of Monsters in Latin America proposes a cinematic cartography of contemporary Latin American horror films that take up the idea of the American continent as a space of radical otherness, or monstrosity, and use it for political purposes. The book explores how Latin American film directors migrate foreign horror tropes to create cinematographic horror hybrids that reclaim and transform monstrosity as a form of historical rewriting. By emphasizing the specificities of the Latin American experience, this book contributes to broad scholarship on horror cinema, at the same time connecting the horror tradition with contemporary discussions on violence, migration, fear of immigrants, and the rewriting of colonial discourses.

This open access book explores the use of visual methods in migration studies through a combination of theoretical analyses and empirical studies. The first section looks at how various visual methods, including photography, film, and mental maps, may be used to analyse the spatial presence of migrants. The second section addresses the processual building of narratives around migration, thereby using formats such as film and visual essay, and reflecting upon the ways they become carriers and mediators of both story and theory within the subject of migration. Section three focuses on vulnerable communities and discusses how visual methods can empower these communities, thereby also focusing on the theoretical and ethical implications of migration. The fourth section addresses the issue of migrant representation in visual discourses. Based on these contributions, a concluding methodological chapter systematizes the use of visual methods in migration studies across disciplines, with regard to their empirical, theoretical, and ethical implications. Multidisciplinary in character, this book is an interesting read for students and migration scholars who engage with visual methodologies, as well as practitioners, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, curators of exhibitions who address the topic of migration visually.