Good code bad code: Exploring the immigration-nation dialectic through media coverage of the Herouxville 'Code of Life' document

Abstract

The media is widely held as a force that both shapes and reflects how citizens think about immigrants and immigration. This article explores two recent developments in the literature on media coverage of immigrants and immigration: the application of Hegelian dialectical theory to the study of discourses about immigration; and a debate concerning the shift from outright racism to subtler forms of ‘new racism’ and its implications for media coverage. The former development views the media as embodying oppositional constructions of ‘us’ and ‘them’, and argues that we stand to learn much about national self-conception by interrogating media narratives about immigration. The latter development suggests that while there have been progressive changes in the field of journalism, negative constructions of racialized immigrant Others persist in new forms. Here, we consider the intersection between these two developments. We adopt the dialectical approach to examine media coverage of the town of Hérouxville, Quebec’s 2007 publication of a ten-page warning about the ‘limits to accommodation’. Because it was written by ‘non-immigrants’ the publication of this document provides an ideal case with which to consider the ‘us’ side. We find that the media framed the document and its authors as racist and anti-immigrant, thereby inscribing a (problematic) definition of the ‘us’ side as being multicultural and anti-racist.