Canadian Newspapers' Portrayals of Refugees of El Salvador's Civil War
Representing Refugees: Canadian Newspapers’ Portrayals of Refugees of El Salvador’s Civil War, 1980 – 1992 By Danielle Jacqueline Dubois A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of MASTER OF ARTS Department of History Joint Master's Program University of Manitoba/University of Winnipeg Winnipeg, Manitoba Copyright © 2014 by Danielle Dubois I Abstract Beginning in 1979 and officially ending in 1992, the civil war in El Salvador displaced over a million people, both in Central America and throughout the world. Of the thousands who fled, approximately 38,000 Salvadorans came to Canada, making them the largest group of Latin American migrants to Canada in that era. The arrival of these Salvadoran refugees, however, has received limited academic attention, and is somewhat representative of the general dearth of historical writing on immigrants to Canada in the late twentieth century. My thesis examines how Salvadoran refugees to Canada were portrayed in Canadian newspapers during the Salvadoran civil war. I specifically examine how Salvadorans were written about in the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Montreal’s Gazette; I focus on three eras: 1980 to 1982, 1986 to 1987, and 1991 to 1992. In the early 1980s, most of the Salvadorans who appeared in Canadian newspapers were portrayed as distant and largely nameless. By 1986 and 1987, newspapers paid more attention to this group, and some individual Salvadorans were mentioned in Canadian newspapers, but the majority of articles dehumanized Salvadoran refugees. In 1991 and 1992, more individual Salvadorans were featured in Canadian newspapers, but these stories still suggested that Salvadorans were not wholly incorporated into mainstream Canada.
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