The limits of the graphic narrative of migration in the public media discourse and the human rights approach
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Abstract
The intensification of violence and the violation of human rights in migratory crises is currently a central
theme in the experimentation of graphic narratives, which have given rise to the hybrid and critical genre
represented by the graphic chronicle and the graphic novel of migration. The verbo-visual treatment
is analyzed in the series of twelve graphic chronicles of migration “My life as an immigrant in Chile”
(2018) of Sábado Magazine, in the newspaper El Mercurio, an agent of public discourse that has consolidated
stereotypes and prejudices about the migrant population. Through qualitative content analysis of
the image-text articulation, the verb-visual strategies of the graphic chronicle of journalistic and literary
tone are examined. The elements that confer authenticity, reliability and veracity to the chronicle were
established according to the use of testimony, portraits of the protagonists and contextual data. Likewise,
literary elements were determined such as the staging of vulnerability, enhancement of the cultural
fabric, multiple narrative voices and the recreation of resilient resistance, which together allude to the
human rights perspective. The graphic chronicle intensifies the use of the testimonial voice and omits
the author (witness), but the latter appears in the verb-visual articulation in biases and introduction of
the ambiguity of migration experiences, and in the relationship with the “distant near”. The graphic
chronicle of migration can be significantly modulated by the mediatized public discourse, weakening its
critical reading of reality.
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