Fronteras: Interculturalidad, Discurso Mediático Y Política en Ecuador en Torno a los Conflictos Migratorios del Siglo XXI

Why choose borders as the articulating concept for this chapter? Well, because since modernity they have become the central political and cultural concept from which discourses on the nation state are constructed, articulated and legitimised. In the same way that borders contain territories, whose legal, economic, institutional and political principles shape their autonomy (total or relative), produce an identifying and distinguishing effect (expressed through symbols: flags, anthems, identity cards, etc.), they are also constituted by an outside, by everything that is excluded. But these identifying mechanisms operate, fundamentally, on cultural formations; and they have a decisive influence on identities, nationalities and, above all, on the differentiating aspects of the different human groups. Within this framework, a series of discourses are produced which tend to be legitimised through the action of the mass media, especially the audiovisual media. These elements, in general terms, make up what Terry Eagleton (2016) called the ‘social unconscious’, and fulfil the function of being objectified and naturalised in cultural formations. It is in this context that migration will be understood, a phenomenon of enormous complexity whose causes are as much political, economic and social as cultural, and which cannot do without the concepts of borders. In the case of Latin America, specifically Ecuador, the mass media play an ambiguous role in their discursive productions regarding this reality.