“Your friend, the illegal:” Definition and paradox in newspaper accounts of U.S. immigration reform

The U.S. Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) created a new legal category, "illegal immigrant eligible for amnesty." Media coverage of IRCA provides an opportunity to analyze the connections between the legal and cultural discourses in which identities are created and contested. From our analysis of media images of amnesty applicants, citizens, and illegal alines in 283 news articles, we find that journalists not only debated the categorization of certain individuals belonged, but also the meanings of immigration categories themselves. To clarify the new category created by IRCA, journalists used "legalization narratives:" accounts of immigrants' geographical, social, and legal journeys from illegal aliens to proto‐citizens. Images of immigrants that journalists constructed were complexly determined, multivocal, sometimes paradoxical, and occasionally subversive.