Les jeunes migrants isolés dans la presse nationale et aquitaine

This paper explores the semantic and rhetorical elements of media discourse on “unaccompanied minors”. The lexico-semantic analysis of a press corpus shows that the hegemony of media discourse is based on administrative hetero-designations and meritocratic portraits or, conversely, figures of delinquency, which do not account for the complexity and specificities of the migratory biographies of these isolated young migrants. These results are discussed in the light of a paradox that runs through the media and legal treatment of representations of “unaccompanied minors”, perceived alternately as “young people to protect” and “migrants to control”.