Media representations of Chinese migrants in the Spanish press: A critical discourse analysis of El País and El Mundo (2020-2025)

This study examines how Chinese migrants are discursively constructed through mainstream press coverage in Spain in the wake of COVID-19. Focusing on coverage in El País (centre-left) and El Mundo (centre-right), the analysis draws on critical discourse analysis to examine 81 news articles published between 2020 and 2025. The findings show that Chinese migrants are predominantly positioned within homogeneous and stereotypical frames that mark them as peripheral outsiders to Spanish society. Despite ideological differences, both newspapers rely on similar media agendas—particularly integration, culture, and crime—through which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are discursively produced. El Mundo , as a conservative press, focuses on constructing a universe of crimes with collective and generalized images of Chinese immigrants, based on the traditional news production routine of the Western press that represents immigration as a threat for the host society. In contrast, El País , as a liberal-minded newspaper, implicitly conveys discriminatory discourses, transmitting racism through its critics and cultural concerns. By foregrounding processes of hierarchy, normalization, and exclusion, this study contributes to debates on ethnicity, migration, and media by demonstrating how everyday journalistic practices reproduce otherness and internal differentiation within migrant communities in a Southern European context.