Racism in Canadian Media as a Social Determinant of Refugee Psychosocial Wellbeing

Background/Rationale: The Mental Health Commission of Canada asserts that, as a signatory of the UN Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, Canada bears responsibility for fostering mental health and wellbeing of incoming refugees. While Canada is globally recognized for being welcoming toward newcomers, systems in the country have demonstrated racism toward racialized refugees. For instance, from 2009 to 2012, Canadian news media constructed refugees as hidden terrorists, bogus claimants, and sources of disease and risk. Research shows that racism negatively impacts health. Thus, the constructs above and their resulting public perceptions may adversely affect refugee health and wellbeing. Aim: This thesis aims to investigate the impact of discursive racism in Canadian news media on the psychosocial wellbeing of racialized refugees in Alberta. My research seeks to answer the following questions 1) How does racism in Canadian print news media affect the psychosocial wellbeing of refugees? by answering three sub-questions i) What is the impact of racism on the psychosocial wellbeing of refugees ii) What are the prevailing media constructs of refugees in Canadian print news media between 2011 and 2021?, and c) How do perceptions and experiences of racism impact the psychosocial wellbeing of racialized refugees living in Alberta? Methods: This constructivist study involved three phases, culminating in three manuscripts. First, I conducted a systematic literature review to examine the impact of discursive racism on the psychosocial wellbeing of refugees, aiming to ascertain the current state of evidence. This involved a comprehensive search of peer-reviewed academic journal articles and grey literature, focusing on publications from North America between 2011 and the present. I used the SPIDER framework to guide the search and synthesis. Second, I investigated the construction of refugees in Canadian news media using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA is a methodology that scrutinizes how language constructs meaning about a particular phenomenon within a socio-political context. Intrinsic to CDA is the analysis of how language serves to produce and maintain societal power relations. Thus, it served as a useful tool for examining how dominant media discourses construct refugees, a marginalized population in Canada. Finally, informed by phases one and two, I conducted interviews to investigate: 1) participant perceptions of media representations of refugees; 2) participant experiences of racism in Canada, and; 3) the psychosocial impacts of the media portrayal of refugees and participants’ experiences of racism. I used qualitative interviews for this phase, allowing me to explore wellbeing and its effects on refugee psychosocial wellbeing while ensuring that the conclusions were grounded in the voices of the refugee community participants. Results: The results of the review indicated a significant relationship between racism and psychosocial wellbeing, with 80% of the articles having demonstrated an association between racism and adverse mental health and psychosocial outcomes. Several of these articles focused on racism in the media and its impact on refugee mental health. These findings emphasized the importance of focusing on media-based racism and its impact on refugee psychosocial wellbeing. The Critical Discourse Analysis rendered three major themes. 1) Commodity and 2) represented how refugees were framed. There were two sub-themes under each of these themes. Under Commodity, there were Helpless Victims and Working Bodies and under Threat, there were Terrorist and Criminal. The third major theme was Dehumanization, a discursive strategy that underlay and weaved through the refugee identity constructs. My findings demonstrate that dehumanization is crucial to the construction of refugees in Canadian news media as a precursor for humans to commit or support racist, punitive refugee policies. And finally, three main themes resulted from my interview data. These were Perspectives and Experiences of Racism, Reflections on Media Constructs, and Psychosocial Wellbeing. Within the theme of Perspectives and Experiences of Racism, there was a specific sub-theme titles Race-Based Double Standards. The theme Reflections on Media Constructs encompassed sub-themes of Reflections of The Terrorist Construct in Experiences of Islamophobia, Reflections of the Helpless Victim Construct in Experiences of Islamophobia, Reflections of Criminal construct in Anti-Black Racism and Reflections of Working Body Construct in Experiences of Workplace Exploitation. Sub-themes within Psychosocial Wellbeing were Impacts of Racism, as well as Coping and Resilience. Conclusion: Racism is associated with adverse health outcomes for racialised refugees. Moreover, media is a powerful conduit for racist discourse. And finally, racism in the media has a profoundly negative affect on the psychosocial wellbeing of racialised refugees living in Alberta. These findings bear strong implications for reform across multiple Canadian systems that affect refugees, including media and journalism, healthcare, and mental health services.

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