Refugees crossing the Mediterranean Sea in small boats has become a common sight in the media, particularly since the so-called 'refugee crisis' in 2015. The number of boats crossing the English Channel between the French and UK coasts has been increasing as other migration routes have been closed down. This article reports the findings of a discourse analysis of 96 UK newspaper articles published in December 2018 when the daily crossings were referred to as a "major crisis". Adopting a broadly critical discursive psychology perspective, we identify the use of three main interpretative repertoires used within the media reporting. Firstly, a 'secure the borders' repertoire which positions the UK's borders as porous and easily breached, secondly, a 'smuggling is immoral' repertoire which works to position smugglers as to blame for the current 'crisis' and removes responsibility for the crisis from the Government, and finally, a 'desperate people' repertoire which worked to position the refugees themselves as vulnerable and in need of protection, but also as people who will engage in risky behaviours.We suggest that the use of these repertoires ultimately functions to obscure the need for safe and legal migration routes to the UK.
The ‘refugee crisis’ refers to the on-going movement of people crossing into Europe, in which over 3,692 migrants and refugees died in 2015. A key point in this ‘crisis’ was the publishing of photographs of one of the young children who died. Despite the death toll, representations and the resulting treatment of refugees in Europe remained ambivalent. This paper compares the representation of the ‘crisis’ across three countries (The UK, Norway and Australia) before and after the publishing of the photographs from one major broadcaster in each country using discourse analysis. It is shown that the photographs led to a more sympathetic portrayal of refugees resulting in the ‘crisis’ shifting from a ‘migrant’ to a ‘refugee crisis’. This analysis demonstrates the importance of the ways in which refugees are presented as well as the benefits of a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to discourse analysis.
Wales has a long history of migration; however, the introduction of dispersed asylum seekers in 2001 has led to Wales becoming a more superdiverse nation. Wales has often been positioned as a more “tolerant nation” than England; however, the increasingly superdiverse nature of Wales in a postdevolution era may now be calling this tolerance thesis into question. Models of refugee and asylum seeker integration suggest that the absence of racism plays a key role in integration. This paper reports the findings of research that centres on refugee and asylum seeker integration in Wales. Nineteen interviews were conducted with refugees and asylum seekers who had been living in Wales for between 1 month and 12 years. Each interview was analysed using a discursive psychology approach. In this paper, I show that the interviewees appeared to negotiate a dilemma when talking about experiencing potentially racist incidents within the interviews, constructing them as trivial so as not to appear critical of the protection they have received in Wales. The findings also highlight the more everyday and banal forms of racism that are regularly experienced by refugees and asylum seekers living in Wales.
Key indicatorsSingle-crystal X-ray study T = 150 K Mean (C-C) = 0.003 Å R factor = 0.029 wR factor = 0.070 Data-to-parameter ratio = 8.2For details of how these key indicators were automatically derived from the article, see
The 'refugee crisis' in Europe has drawn attention to the reasons why people risk desperate journeys to seek safety. However, less research has focussed on what happens to those on the move once they have reached their destination country. In recent years the UK government's 'hostile environment' policy for asylum seekers has taken precedence over attempts to integrate refugees, creating a system in which destitution, dispersal and detention have all become pervasive features. This paper takes a discursive psychological approach to the analysis of interviews with asylum seekers in Wales, UK. It argues that participants draw on economic repertoires of effortfulness to construct accounts in which belonging is dependent upon being able to contribute to the economic and civic life of the host society. It further highlights how participants construct accounts in which restriction from the asylum system is positioned as the reason for not belonging and that time spent as an asylum seeker is policy-imposed liminality. The findings suggest that allowing asylum seekers to work would be a key step forward in integration policy and contribute to generating a greater sense of belonging.
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