Work Package 1: CONSTRUCTION OF MIGRATION CRISIS DISCOURSES (Months 6-15)

Led by: Prof. Federico Faloppa and Dr. Anne Vestergaard

We argue that dominant glossaries and statistical categories construct narratives/discourses which in turn legitimise policy agendas. Corpus-driven analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) have been chosen as the primary research method for WP1.

WP1 – Phase 1: Gathering the corpora through Corpus-driven analysis

All partners will engage in collecting and analysing:

1. Institutional discourses of governments (France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, UK) and EU organisations, including press releases, interviews, social media posts, seeking to build glossaries and trace the emergence and recurrence of crisis narratives.
2. Commonly used glossaries of migration, such as UNHCR’s Master Glossary of Terms (2006); European Migration Network’s Asylum and Migration Glossary (2014); UNESCO’s Glossary of Migration Terminology (2013); IOM’s Glossary on Migration (2019).
3. Data produced by governmental and non-governmental organisations and statistical categories used to describe unauthorised border crossings (Frontex) and migrants’ categories.

WP1 – Phase 2: Quantitative and qualitative study of collected corpora using linguistic analysis, glossary and dictionary building

We will conduct collocation, frequency, and semantic analysis through Sketchengine, and then apply categories used in CDA such as role allocation; generalisation and specification; association and dissociation; personalisation and impersonalisation; indetermination and differentiation; nomination and categorisation; functionalisation and identification; and overdetermination to explore roles allocated to social actors.

We believe that a corpus-driven analysis, complemented with CDA, are the best methods of analysis for examining the current construction of narratives around ‘illegal’ migration and their impact on policy making. The project aims to understand and reveal the power relations and ideology behind the current discourse on migration.

Deliverables – WP1:

• A report that will map the main political narratives on migration for each case study; evaluate their impact on policy rhetoric and practice; and examine how policy actors have reacted to these narratives.
• Two co-authored academic articles — one methodological and the other reporting the findings of WP1 — submitted to refereed journals.