Mirrored journeys

Travelling on foot still constitutes, in the midst of the twenty-first century, a fundamental moment in a great number of current migrants’ journeys, both across Africa and Central America, fleeing from miserable living conditions and violence. This article compares an in-depth narrative approach to the issue with the mainstream coverage of the Central American caravan by the end of 2018, in order to reflect on the invisibility and vulnerability of walking migrants. While the caravan empowered and brought migrants the opportunity to struggle for a safe journey, this hypervisibility has not been translated into a better-contextualised account in mainstream media. In contrast, the non-fiction books and series of reportages published by Óscar Martínez, and by Xavier Aldekoa with co-author Ruido Photo, focus on the effects of the European Union’s and the United States’ externalisation of borders and securitisation policies, which force migrants to walk in order to avoid border surveillance and criminal organizations’ attacks, and, in the open desert, to face deportation.

在21世纪的当下，徒步出行仍是众多横跨非洲与中美洲的流亡移民旅程中的核心环节——这些移民为逃离窘迫的生存环境与暴力侵害而踏上逃亡之路。本文将针对该议题的深度叙事研究路径，与2018年末主流媒体对中美洲移民大篷车的报道进行对比，旨在反思徒步移民群体的被忽视性与脆弱处境。尽管移民大篷车运动赋予了移民群体力量，并为他们争取安全出行的抗争提供了机遇，但这种高度曝光并未推动主流媒体产出更具情境化的深度报道。与之形成鲜明对比的是，奥斯卡·马丁内斯（Óscar Martínez）以及哈维尔·阿尔德科亚与合著者鲁伊多摄影（Ruido Photo）所出版的非虚构著作与系列深度报道，聚焦欧盟与美国推行的边境外部化及边境安全化政策所带来的影响：这些政策迫使移民不得不选择徒步出行，以躲避边境监控与犯罪组织的袭击，同时在广袤的荒漠地带直面被遣返的结局。