POLITICAL-DISCURSIVE PRODUCTION OF THE CHILE-BOLIVIA BORDER IN PANDEMIC CONTEXTS

This article examines how the Chilean print media framed the concepts of borders and migration in the Chilean context of the COVID Pandemic 2020-2021. We argue that the confinement measures and border closures not only tightened control over migrant mobility, but also reinforced the portrayal of migrants as outsiders to the social order of the nation-state. This narrative, in turn, became a new rationale for their rejection and expulsion. Through a content analysis of the print media, we address the case of the Pisiga-Colchane border crossing between Chile with Bolivia in the Tarapacá region. The study is based on a corpus of 330 news articles collected between March 11, 2020, and April 2021.