Solidarity and the EU Migration Crisis; Rama-Meloni Pact through the Media Lens

Solidarity is a complex, multidimensional and sometimes an evasive concept. Solidarity is deeply linked with the humanitarian crisis, like the one the European Union has been facing since 2015: the refugee crisis. Waves of immigrants and asylum seekers have arrived in EU countries like in Italy, Greece, etc., thus creating some serious challenges for the European institutions, citizens and politics, while also making the headlines in the European media. The importance of solidarity in a migration crisis is institutionalized in the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum, approved by the EU Parliament in June 2024. This makes it crucial to study the correlation between solidarity, migration and media. Using critical theories on media and communication, studying the significance of any text, practice or communicative element of media content, I aim to highlight how the European and Albanian media have covered the collaboration between Italy and Albania, represented by the Rama-Meloni ‘Migration Pact’, in terms of solidarity and migration. This study aims to understand of the role of solidarity in the EU migration crisis, by focusing on studies of solidarity, migration and media, using statistics and global indexes, as well as European and Albanian media monitoring.