The Online Communication of Art-Based Education Organisations Working with Underage Refugees and Migrants in Europe

Abstract

Communication is one of the critical issues organisations working with migrants and refugees in Europe must face. Our research question is how do art-based education organisations’ projects working with underage migrants and refugees communicate online? There is a gap concerning three key discursive approaches that we wish to tackle when communicating about these populations: miserabilism, even-image, and gender-neutrality. We propose to analyse them by focusing the research on a case study of two music organisations in two different European countries – the Swedish Dream Orchestra and El Sistema Greece. Through a multimodal critical discourse analysis of their digital communication, the results show that both organisations use their multicultural contexts as an asset to persuade people to join the orchestra (as volunteers, as teachers) and to make donations. However, they do not present intercultural and transcultural alternative approaches. These findings are important to question the choices made when communicating about such ethically and emotionally-charged social phenomenon as the social inclusion of underage migrants and refugees through art-based educational projects in Europe.