Perpetrators, victims, burdens or resources? : - An ambivalent media picture of children and youths categorised as unaccompanied

This study scrutinises, from a critical perspective, how Swedish mainstream news media depict children and youths categorised as unaccompanied after the identified discursive shift in the late autumn of 2015, where a more hostile and negative reporting on refugees became even more prominent. In addition, it explores what different power structures that are made visible in the news reporting. This is made possible by scrutinising 40 articles from the major national newspapers in Sweden that have daily releases, the so called mainstream media. The critical discourse analysis is used as a method and theory in order to find a focus that is critical and questioning towards existing power structures. Additionally, it contains a focus on how borders and differences are created between certain groups of people by using theoretical perspectives on otherness and postcolonial theory. The study shows an ambivalent media picture and clearly makes unequal and hierarchical power structures visible through the use of different assumptions, accepted truths and journalistic techniques