Political and media discourses about integrating refugees in the UK

Date

2019-04-22

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

0046-2772

Volume Title

Publisher

Wiley

Type

Article

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

This article addresses political and media discourses about integrating refugees in the UK in the context of the “refugee crisis”. A discursive psychological approach is presented as the best way to understand what talk about the concept is used to accomplish in these debates. A large corpus of political discussions (13 hours of debate featuring 146 politicians) and 960 newspaper articles from the UK were discourse analysed. The analysis identified five dilemmas about integration: Integration is positive and necessary, but challenging; Host communities are presented as welcoming, but there are limits to their capacity; Refugees are responsible for integration, but host communities need to provide support; Good refugees integrate, bad ones don't; Refugees are vulnerable and are skilled. All are used to warrant the inclusion or exclusion of refugees. The responsibility of western nations to support refugees is therefore contingent on the refugees behaving in specific ways.

Description

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.

Keywords

Refugee Crisis, Refugees, Integration, Discursive Psychology, Discourse Analysis

Citation

Goodman, S., Kirkwood, S. (2019) Political and media discourses about integrating refugees in the UK. European Journal of Social Psychology,

Rights

Research Institute