Migration Discourse Research Articles

Female, Deserving, and European? The Changing EUropean Migration Discourse in the Face of the Russia–Ukraine War

AbstractThe initial response of the European Union (EU) to people fleeing Ukraine was unusually univocal and welcoming, culminating in the swift activation of the Temporary Protection Directive. This predominantly humanitarian response represents a special case and an outlier in terms of how the EU and its member states have responded to previous displacements. This paper explores the discursive construction that made this response possible, by looking at how forced migration from Ukraine has been characterised in the EUropean political discourses. Drawing on discourse theory and critical migration studies, we assume that the discourse is marked by differences drawn along the lines of “race,” “gender,” and “distance,” which are linked to ideas about national identity and European values. In order to reflect the multilevel European discourse, we reconstruct the political discourse on the EU level as well as in two diverse cases, Poland and Germany. Our findings suggest that despite national differences and the presence of well-established tropes of deservingness, the EUropean discourse is not only based on ideas surrounding vulnerability of the Ukrainian Other and the European Self but is also influenced by the perception of the threatening Russian Other. Especially in Poland, welcoming refugees from Ukraine is linked to security concerns, while the EU and German discourses stress the role of European values and solidarity. Thus, the acceptance of Ukrainian refugees should be seen as part of the overall European response to Russian aggression and not as a departure from its previous stance on migration.

The state of voluntariness? (Re)migration policy in Post-Fascist Germany between denazification, decolonization and development

ABSTRACT Between 1949 and 1980, voluntariness became a key element in West Germany’s post-fascist migration regime, intended to ethically frame the forced deportations of migrants. Voluntariness appeared in German migration legislation as a euphemistic term for forced removals. Politicians and lawyers emphasized the need to offer voluntary repatriation to those facing inevitable deportation. To avoid any association with Nazi deportations, both liberals and ‘former’ Nazis involved in Germany’s migration policy underscored the notion of voluntariness in what were essentially forced deportations. The paradigm of voluntariness in repatriation management was influenced by a specific German need to denazify deportations and migration practices, as well as by a global shift towards voluntariness associated with liberalization, decolonization, development, Cold War rivalries and the rise of liberal internationalism. Global practices and discourses of return migration both emerged from and helped shape this paradigm of voluntariness, as the liberalizing world sought to distance itself from its fascist legacy and align with emancipatory and progressive ideals, despite the ongoing deportation of migrants from the Global South. I argue that West Germany played a significant role in shaping and globalizing the concept of voluntary repatriation within this historical context, transforming it from a paradigm into a dispositive.

(Un)deserving victims: the race-gender-geopolitics nexus of migration discourses in Poland

ABSTRACT What makes some displaced populations deserving protection more than others? I discuss this complex problem in a critical analysis of discursive narratives, presented by Polish authorities about the situation on its two Eastern borders between 2021 and 2023. I propose the race-gender-geopolitics nexus of intersectional analysis to reveal how and why migrants on the Polish-Belarusian border were presented as threatening and ingenuine as asylum-seekers, and Ukrainians became real ‘war refugees’. While the identified narratives corresponded with the existing studies on the influence of race and gender on perceived deservingness and victimisation, considering geopolitics offers a novel, context-specific analytical layer of discourse production. I thus move beyond the ‘deserving/undeserving’ binary, complicating the picture with other groups of displaced people, often silenced in the analysed representations. I demonstrate how the widespread post-colonial, racializing and patriarchal attitudes have been intertwined with regional geopolitical goals and relations with neighbouring countries. For Poland, these are the aspirations to anchor its position within the West, as well as its complicated history with Russia and Belarus but also Ukraine. I argue that all of that, coupled with the long-standing antimigrant attitudes, resulted in particular discourses about the incoming people.

“This story is not about immigrants but about refugees”: “Loose Change” by Andrea Levy

ABSTRACT In the past two decades, the critical discourse of migration has shifted from an emphatic validation of migrancy still dominant at the end of the last century to a more differentiated view, taking into account the challenges of forced displacement. This article describes this shift and explores how it has facilitated new readings of migrant literature. It re-examines Andrea Levy’s short story “Loose Change”, discussing how its reception so far has hinged on the assumption of a principal sameness of all migrants. Following this, it problematizes critics’ consistent omission to reflect on the differences Levy develops between the narrator, a well-to-do descendant of the Windrush generation, and a homeless refugee from Uzbekistan. As is shown, close attention to these differences yields a new understanding of Levy’s short story which raises crucial questions about British civil society’s attitude to refugees and British civilians’ implication in their fates.

Visions of Migration: News Images and the Production of Knowledge on the U.S. Southern Border

This monograph investigates the visual construction of migration on the U.S. southern border by the U.S. news industry. This study employs a quantitative ( N = 1,050) and qualitative ( N = 21) social semiotic analysis to illuminate the pervasive patterns of visual representation by three news agencies: The Associated Press, Getty Images, and Reuters. The analysis reveals levels of symbolic annihilation, social separation, and asymmetrical power dynamics that contribute to the symbolic othering of migrants. In-depth interviews with 21 photojournalists and field observation of an additional five photojournalists on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas were conducted to analyze the factors that influence the production of images. Photojournalists are subject to myriad physical, social, and ideological influences from politicians, law enforcement, news organizations, non-governmental organizations, drug cartels, and border residents that constrain the depiction of migration. These complex conditions of production are marked by a scarcity of time, money, and autonomy that ultimately result in conventionalized imagery. The findings suggest that more comprehensive, nuanced, and humanizing accounts of migration can occur when external entities do not intercede in the interaction between photographers and migrants. Unconventional imagery, however, is no guarantee of empathetic reception from audiences who are steeped in hegemonic migration discourses produced by institutions that profoundly profit from a perpetual migration “crisis.”

Unveiling Discursive Strategies and Ideologies: A Critical Analysis of Migration Discourse in Turkish Newspapers

The portrayal of migrants in the media is frequently shaped by a variety of discursive strategies aimed at influencing public perception. This study examines the discursive strategies employed by two prominent Turkish newspapers, Daily Sabah and Duvar, and the underlying ideologies that drive the selection and utilization of such strategies. The theoretical framework guiding this study draws upon Reisigl’s (2017) model, providing a structured approach to data analysis. The findings reveal that Daily Sabah strategically employs a spectrum of discursive strategies, including nomination, perspectivization, argumentation, intensification, predication, and mitigation. Conversely, Duvar predominantly utilizes prediction, mitigation, intensification, and argumentation in their portrayal of migrants. The analysis highlights instances where both newspapers employ multiple discursive strategies within the same news discourse, underscoring the nuanced nature of media construction of discourses on migration. Crucially, the study discerns that the discursive strategies employed by the two newspapers serve distinct purposes and are underpinned by different ideologies. This nuanced exploration sheds light on the intricate relationship between media representation, discursive strategies, and ideological frameworks in shaping public perceptions of migration.

Policy Actors’ Struggle for Attention: The Role of Peer Networks in the Migration Discourse on Twitter (X)

Policy Actors’ Struggle for Attention: The Role of Peer Networks in the Migration Discourse on Twitter (X)

The European Commission and the migration-development nexus: accessing resources and increasing the mandate

ABSTRACT The migration-development nexus (MDN) denotes interdependencies between international migration and development. The article identifies six different causal relations between migration and development in the scientific literature and applies them to understand EU policy on the nexus. At EU level, the nexus often serves the central policy objective of limiting irregular migration to Europe, the so-called root causes approach. Yet, contrary to prior research, this article finds that an opposing nexus conceptualization that calls for enabling migration is actually the dominant causality promoted by the European Commission. Unlike studies that explain the dominance of the root causes approach as a lowest-common-denominator choice, this article argues that the Commission’s DGs also use the nexus strategically. They promote contradictory approaches, which however all call for an increased Commission mandate and financial resources, selectively omitting those nexus frames that would decrease their role. The migration literature often relegates the MDN to a sub-theme of migration policy. This study shows that MDN is central to the entire EU migration policy area and transpires much of its migration discourse. The nexus and its conceptualizations are thus instrumental for broader migration policy debates beyond the EU as they touch upon demographics, social security, and welfare questions.

Beyond Vicarious Storytelling: How Level Telling Fields Could Help Create a Fair Narrative on Migration

Life stories play a crucial role in migration discourses: they serve as testimony in journalistic work, form the core of ambassadorial storytelling by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and inspire collaborative projects initiated by writers seeking to express their solidarity. However, this article argues, drawing on migrants’ experiences for such purposes also creates an ethical dilemma: speaking about–or even for–rather than with migrants assigns them a passive role and tends to recycle existing narrative patterns and templates. Starting with a generic distinction between what we call stories of migration (various forms of self-expression granting migrants full authority and control over their narrative) and narratives on migration (external perspectives, e.g., academic, economic, political, and legal approaches, detached from lived experience), we explore the extensive middle ground of hybrid forms between these two extremes–i.e., different kinds of vicarious storytelling–before addressing their ethical implications. We further discuss how the metaphor of the level playing field, a key concept in economics, can be used in transdisciplinary research projects to establish level telling fields (LTFs), i.e., communicative spaces characterized by a fair dialogue on an equal footing for all participants.

Chronopolitics: Decolonising African Migration Studies

This article proposes the concept of ‘chronopolitics’ as a heuristic for a kind of decolonial imagination in migration studies, one that insists on structural changes as opposed to those relational ones that dominate the field. The article argues that migration scholars should question the coloniality of key concepts they use in their work to understand how the ‘solutions’ they propose (re)embed a colonial world and view. Building on previous critiques of migration studies, the article proposes that a chronopolitical argument to decolonising migration studies reveals the intrinsic connectivity of temporal and geographical linkages, in order to relate migration research epistemologies to ontological problems. This can allow the migration discourse to move beyond the centre, to address the current ‘black burden’ of ambivalent academic positioning and predominant methodological and conceptual approaches to migration studies. In these ways, chronopolitics adds conceptually to an underexplored debate in the field.

‘Being free’: Indigenous youth and future making in the wake of forced migration

Abstract Taking migration discourse (Dick 2010, 2013; Dick and Arnold 2017) as a starting point, this paper examines how Indigenous youth in Guatemala navigate and understand complex migratory contexts at home before they decide, or are compelled, to migrate. Using methods of discourse analysis, I illuminate how talk about migration becomes a key site for young people to challenge transnational migration as an opportunity and thereby create alternate spatiotemoral renderings of the future for themselves and their communities. I argue that through their migration discourse young people are engaging in a form of everyday politics that helps complicate our understandings of the migratory contexts they are part of. As such, this work contributes to how we conceptualize migratory contexts that do not fall neatly into categories of ‘voluntary’ and ‘involuntary’ and instead argues for an attentiveness to migratory decision-making as a complex negotiation—a complexity which is often lost when we position ‘deciding to leave’ and ‘fleeing’ as incommensurate and analytically distinct categories.

Islands on the edge: 42,000-year-old occupation of the Tanimbar islands and its implications for the Sunda-Sahul early human migration discourse

Tanimbar is one of the main island groups in Wallacea included in Birdsell's early human migration routes from Sunda to Sahul, situated at the easternmost end of south Wallacea on Birdsell's Route 2A. Despite its geographic significance, the island group has not undergone thorough archaeological investigation. Here, we present the first evidence of Pleistocene human occupation in the Tanimbar Islands, dating back approximately 42,000 years, representing one of the oldest ages for human occupation in Wallacea. This finding aligns with records from islands in the west of Wallacea, suggesting rapid human movement through the region. The successful colonization of Tanimbar, like other islands in southern Wallacea, required advanced maritime technology. However, unlike other islands on Route 2A, the early occupants on Tanimbar had access to medium-sized terrestrial mammals, specifically macropods, which are now locally extinct. The faunal remains from the initial colonization period suggest exploitation of both terrestrial and marine resources. This early settlement of the Tanimbar's potentially enabled exploration of surrounding islands, supported by possible evidence of the movement of lithic raw materials and potentially the introduction of macropods from Sahul.

Between micronarratives of individual gain and macronarratives of public utility: discourses of return migration in times of crisis

ABSTRACT Many Central and Eastern European countries recognized the benefits of migration of their citizens after the EU enlargement in 2004, such as financial remittances and obtaining education abroad. Even more advantages are expected by the sending states upon anticipated return of migrants to the countries of origin. The article will examine Polish policies of return migration in times of two crises: Brexit and the pandemic. The analysis includes macronarratives (political discourse, such as state documents, legal acts and narratives of various state representatives and authorities concerning the return of Poles) and micronarratives (stories of individuals). Interviews with over 50 Polish migrants in the UK are juxtaposed with the state narratives. On the example of Poland, the article demonstrates how the process of possible return migration is constructed, narrated, and justified in micro- and macronarratives. The narratives and political tools engaged in inducing return migration reflect the state’s and the migrants’ anticipations and projections about the vision of community, national belonging, and citizen’s duties. The study of the micro- and macronaratives sheds light on nuanced ways in which co-agency works: that is, how social phenomena are shaped by actors who have diverse ways of looking at the problem, different (partly complementary, partly opposing) interests and motivations.

Media discourses of migration: A focus on Europe

AbstractWith a focus on the post‐2015 period in the western and northern regions of Europe, the research examined here shows prominent media discourses of othering, threat and deservedness of migrants. This spatial and temporal frame lends itself to the study of how discourses reflect the impact of the so‐called ‘refugee crisis’ in these regions of Europe. Since there was also continued immigration related to increased opportunities for work, education, quality of life and family togetherness which have long brought migrants to these European countries, examining the research in this period allows us to discover how these discourses might distinguish between different migrant experiences. There is some evidence for the differentiation of certain types of people of migration background in the media discourses, despite a strong tendency to stereotype and essentialise regardless of the actual background of migrants or their descendants. Another key aspect in the research to date is how professional versus participatory media can be compared in the discourses of migration they reproduce, and how these different types of media play a role in society. The article ends with a call for a more intersectional perspective on migration which incorporates critical perspectives on racialisation, and further examination of the voices of migrants in the media.

International Migration Framing in the Global Times (2012–2022): Constructing Identity Narrative About the Self and the Other

This article addresses a research gap in the studies of international migration discourse in China's mass media. The focus on the Global Times, a Chinese Communist Party-owned commercialised newspaper famous for its nationalist discourse, elucidates how news about this global issue is used to construct China's identity narrative. The empirical part includes the analysis of the data spanning a decade (2012–2022) collected from the Global Times. It is studied with the help of computational text analysis tools, including topic modelling that is used to identify frames in the coverage of international migration. The analysis reveals that the Global Times devotes disproportionate attention to migration-related political, security, and socio-economic problems in the West, reproducing elements of the mainstream discourse in the Western media. Such overrepresentation, coupled with the selective coverage of China's own experience with international migration is used to emphasise the weaknesses of the Other in contrast to the stable Self.

Sport, migration and national identity in contemporary Irish media

ABSTRACT Taking a “cultural studies” approach that focuses on the ways in which media negotiate the intersections of nation, race and ethnicity, this article examines Irish print and broadcast media discourses of migration surrounding the Irish national soccer team and Gaelic games following the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. It argues that the focus on the Irish soccer team’s “home-grown” diversity has superficially celebrated a developing national cosmopolitanism and embrace of migration, but against the backdrop of declining national team fortunes and recruits from the emigrant descendant “diaspora” in Britain. Profiles of immigrant players in Gaelic games have engaged critically, to a degree, with nativism and racism, but offer a benign and future-orientated representation of these games. While significant, both are limited as vehicles for collective national retrospection and introspection with regard to racism in Irish sport and society.

Safe migration: Re‐embedding as anticipatory, de‐territorial governance

AbstractIn 2019, the United Nations (UN) promulgated the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration which charts the UN's global migration policy strategy, affording central importance to safety in migration. This ascendant focus on safe migration is echoed in a range of national and regional policy initiatives. Despite the policy enthusiasm for safe migration, to date, there is a dearth of critical scholarly attention to this policy shift. This paper builds on 7 years of ethnographic research on safe migration interventions in mainland Southeast Asia. Centring on the Mekong region, this paper examines two interlocking effects of safe migration policy instrumentalisation. On the one hand, safe migration discourse' spatio‐temporal underpinnings dispositions programmes to gravitate towards policy abstractions. Yet, in practice, safe migration interventions heavily depend on informal constellations of sociality, where migrants become re‐embedded as both objects and instruments of policy.

Politics metaphor in British and Bosnian-Herzegovinian migration discourse

As the geopolitical situation changes, it is necessary to discuss how politics is structured by metaphor in the context of recent social phenomena, such as the European migrant crisis. This paper analyses the conceptual metaphors politics as war, politics as a game, politics as a trade, and politics as a theater in British and Bosnian-Herzegovinian newspapers. The goal of this study is to establish to what extent and in which situations journalists resort to figurative language to persuade the recipients to view politics in a desired way. The paper aims to reflect on the use of deliberate metaphor as a perspective-changing device by journalists striving to achieve their rhetorical goals and influence recipients’ perception of the political situation. The corpus comprises 174 British and 307 Bosnian-Herzegovinian articles collected from August 2015 to March 2016 (247,912 words). Relying on Steen et al.’s (2010) model of metaphor analysis, the paper investigates the types of metaphor in the corpus, the deliberate use of politics metaphors and their communicative function in migration discourse - discussing both the rhetorical goals of journalists and the rhetorical effects on recipients. It has been established that the analyzed set of metaphors has a divertive and persuasive function in migration discourse. Similar studies are encouraged to shed light on how deliberate metaphors related to politics may have diverging communicative functions in other types of discourse.

Securitization of Migration and Crisis Management in Poland

ObjectivesThe purpose of article is to present the issue of migration crisis management in the context of securitization theory. It is of key importance to show the way in which the phenomenon of migration and crises are presented to the Polish public by political actors, as well as the actions taken to solve them. The analysis covers two important migration crises in the recent years, namely the EU refugee crisis that was particularly intensified in 2015 and the crisis on the Belarusian border in 2021-2022.MethodsThe approach used in the research process is descriptive and exploratory in its nature. The main methods used in this study include desk research and a systematic review of literature and of websites concerning securitization theory and migration crises selected as case studies.ResultsWhat is also associated with the policies and practices in place at the time of migration crises, is a negative migration discourse, compounded by a narrative that describes migration and migrants as a threat, and images designed to create fear. Socially constructed “threats of migration” as a security issue in Poland concern migrants from the Middle East and Africa.ConclusionsIn a situation referred to as a crisis, during which migrants are defined as a threat requiring the use of emergency measures, policymakers have an option of managing migration to limit its scale. This model involves, among other things, closing borders, increasing the number of services, denying asylum requests or, finally, erecting a fence and a monitoring system in the cross-border area.

National heroes or dangerous failures

This article centres the Global South in studies of language and mobility by focusing on migration discourse in El Salvador, a Central American country with four decades of widespread emigration. The analysis examines state-endorsed discourses, tracing how entextualised figures of migrant personhood shift over time in response to changing political-economic conditions. Gender is central to these dominant depictions, which rely on a consistent contrast between successful and failed migrants that mobilises neoliberal models of personhood. This dichotomy emerges through indexical associations with heteropatriachal forms of care: successful migrants fulfil their responsibilities by providing for their family and their nation, whereas failed migrants do not. By placing the onus on individual actions, these dominant discourses elide the state abandonment and global political economic inequalities that continue to compel Salvadorans to migrate.