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The starting point for this chapter is that hybridization processes in contemporary media spheres, together with the growth of neo-conservative and xenophobic movements across Europe and a general tendency to understand radical anti-racism within a framework of political extremism, have created new conditions for claims-making against racism. Drawing on the politics of listening (Bassel, The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and Challenges for Democratic Life. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017; Dreher, Continuum, 23(4), 445–458, 2009) and political claims-making theory (Koopmans et al., Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe. University of Minnesota Press, 2005), this chapter focuses on four mediated events of racism and racialization in Helsinki and Malmo—two urban milieus marked by different historical, demographic, social, and political realities. By examining the content and circulation of claims against racism as well as the responses to such claims, and by showing the value of political listening in the analysis of debates on racism, the chapter examines how some events develop into “critical events” while others do not.

Despite the apparent failure of the European news media to create solidarity across geographic and mediated space during the Rwandan genocide and the Second Congo War, humanitarian suffering in the region has recently reached Europe through literature and cinema. Amongst the recent cultural oeuvres dealing with humanitarian issues in the region, we find the autobiography A long way from paradise (2010) by Leah Chishugi and the documentary film Blood in the Mobile (2010) by Frank Poulsen. Drawing on an empirical study encompassing online discussion sites, news media and magazines in three European countries (Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom), we ask how journalists and web commentators relate to these two cultural products in particular, and human suffering on the African continent in general. We are particularly interested in whether and how compassion is verbalised and visualised in online and offline narratives when the African Great Lakes region is discussed. We also ask whether and how ...

While ethnic hierarchies and labour market enclaves are commonly discussed at the macro level, this study focuses on a less explored area of research, namely, the study of ethnic and professional hierarchies on the level of mediated discourse. Taking various kinds of online discussion forums as the empirical entry point, this article sets out to answer if and how ethnicity, migrant background and/or language skills emerge as new hierarchical logics beside divisions, such as gender and education, when professional status is assigned online. Drawing on affect theory and the notion of status conflict, this article argues that in Finnish online discussion forums, the high-skilled migrant care worker is envisioned as a paradoxical figure who at the same time is seen as a saviour from abroad and an “affect alien” who causes confusion and discomfort. Both positions, the article argues, are the fruits of a narrow discursive construction of the commodified high-skilled migrant as “a servant” for our needs.