AbstractAround the world, nearly 50 million children have migrated across borders or been forcibly displaced. When the military coup occurred and tensions escalated in Myanmar, many citizens sought refuge in Mizoram, not merely as refugees but as individuals seeking shelter among their own people and the ethnic community they relate to. Mizoram’s geographic proximity and cultural ties to Myanmar positioned it as a critical sanctuary for those escaping violence. India’s Mizoram not only shares a border with Myanmar but also has a large population belonging to the Zo tribe, which is divided by this border. This study explores the coverage of child refugees in Mizo vernacular media, with a special focus on Vanglaini, Mizoram’s largest circulated daily. By the end of December 2024, Mizoram’s Home Department recorded 33,036 refugees from Myanmar, with 12,633 of them being children under the age of 18. Displacement profoundly affects children, making them one of the most vulnerable groups. The study aims to understand how the media frames these child refugees and how their plight is represented, often overshadowed by broader political and adult-focused narratives. This study applies Erving Goffman’s framing theory and Stuart Hall’s representation theory. Content analysis is done to evaluate coverage patterns, tone, and framing of media narratives concerning displaced children, highlighting the media’s role in accurately representing their conditions. The selection of news articles is done from Mizoram’s Vanglaini. This study employs content analysis of 245 randomly selected Vanglaini issues published between February 2021 and December 2023. Among the samples studied, 46 items, accounting for 18.37% of the total, discussed Myanmar refugees, referred to as “Raltlan” in the local dialect. The humanitarian frame was the most dominant, appearing in 66.7% of the articles, while frames on cultural affinity constituted 15.6% of the articles studied. These frames served to positively reinforce the need to support “Raltlan” in Mizoram. The emphasis on cultural affinity highlighted the ethnic and historical similarities between “Raltlan” and the host community, both of whom belong to the Zo ethnicity. However, only 9 articles specifically addressed child refugees, making up 20% of the total reports on “Raltlan” and only 3.67% of all the samples analyzed, who were largely depicted through numerical data rather than personal narratives. Intensive interviews with child refugees were conducted, which were thematically analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) method, revealing themes such as journey & adaptation, economic hardship and food insecurity, emotional well-being, community support & resources, cultural identity and self-representation, spirituality and faith, and longing for home. The study underscores the media’s critical role in shaping public understanding and policy discourse around child refugees. In order to highlight the voices and lived realities of displaced children, it advocates for more complex, sympathetic, and inclusive media representations that go beyond statistics. Such representation is crucial for promoting social cohesion and long-term integration in addition to lobbying and aid mobilization.
Lalrosangi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.