The Visual Framing of Solidarity or Polarization: Comparing Local Mobilizations on the Issue of Race/Ethnicity and Migration in Denmark and internationally

In the summer of 2020 BLM protesters in Denmark, Greenland, the UK, Sweden and Germany used visual and aesthetic means to mobilize protest on the issue of racism in place specific contexts, including the famous toppling of statues as well as the creation of new citizen statues by the movements. In the long summer of migration, few years before, visual images of migration and of refugees have been also employed by photographers, journalists, activists or political party strategies in Denmark and internationally in order to mobilize solidarity and/or influence and polarize public opinion. Our paper combines visual and discursive analysis of solidarity and polarization of migration debates focusing on social movements, media, and professional politicians. Based on an interdisciplinary discussion of visual analysis in political participation research and social movement studies, we will present ongoing empirical research on the Black Lives Matter movement and immigrants’ rights mobilization in Denmark and Copenhagen in comparison with other European protests in specific localities. Our analysis reflects on various forms of political participation in a context of polarized media debates taking as empirical examples the difference between BLM-movement and immigrant rights movements in the past five years. We see the BLM-movement closer connected to a cultural trauma in relation to black bodies (Lund 2020) while immigrant rights have different legal and political implications in relation to historic citizenship debates, media framing and audience decoding. We include examples based on visual qualitative and quantitative analysis of digital media, public discourse, and public street protest including the toppling of visual art and citizen statues representing historic persona contested by BLM protesters. In our case studies we focus on (1) visual strategies of public expression of Black Lives Matter and refugee solidarity protesters in Denmark and internationally, (2) the visual representation of protesters by the media and, (3), in interaction, the visibility of BLM in the context of Danish media debates about migration politics.