Neither victims nor threats: Challenging traditional representations of migrants in societal and educational contexts

Migration policies and practices have generally tended to conceive migrants either as victims in need of protection or as threats to be kept under control. Besides, the classic distinction between refugees and economic migrants that has underpinned the ideation and implementation of such policies and practices has further restricted over time, thus increasingly conceiving the former as bogus claimants and the latter as job stealers or, at worst, as inherently criminals. By employing feminist and decolonial perspectives, the current paper aims at counteracting such discourses both in social and educational settings, exploring alternative ways to conceive of migrants and migration movements. It will do so in three ways. First, it will briefly trace back the process of increasing criminalisation of migration movements and the parallel exacerbation of social and political discourses regarding migration, in order to provide a broad historical overview of the current situation. Second, it will critically look at how such restrictive policies and practices have produced social and legal divisions among migrants, dividing them along lines of class, race, and gender. Third, it will explore the role of educational practices in critically analysing these social divisions through an intersectional lens and potentially counteract and overcome the dominant discourses on migration.