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Humanitarian Discourse Legitimating Migration Control: FRONTEX Public Communication

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Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Abstract

This paper examines discursive strategies on irregular migration of the European border control agency FRONTEX. The agency, which was launched in 2004, has become an important reference for policy makers and a media source across Europe. A critical discourse analysis was applied to the press releases. FRONTEX uses three discursive strategies in its communication: security, technocracy, and humanitarianism. Humanitarian discourse represents migrants as victims, and uses humanitarian concepts when describing FRONTEX operations and training objectives. This discursive dislocation can be theorized as discursive simulation of language and practice originating from a different context humanitarian action and philanthropy into another context border control.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    FRONTEX press release references are marked throughout this chapter as FRONTEX, date.

  2. 2.

    Emergenza umanitaria and Stato di emergenza nazionale in Italian.

  3. 3.

    News coverage studies referenced here apply either frame or discourse analysis. The concept of frame is understood here as equal to mediated representation. It refers to the journalistic practice of perspectivization (Wodak and Meyer 2009, 29), although it is not always conscious, but a result of routines, cultural expectations, and socio-cognitive understandings (concept of frame, see e.g. van Gorp 2005; Horsti 2008).

  4. 4.

    Van Gorp (2005) discusses a frame of asylum seekers as intruders and Horsti (2003) as threats. Erjavec (2003) applies the construction of moral panic, while ter Wal (1996) argues that the media pathologizes migrants.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Academy of Finland Post-Doctoral Researcher, CEREN, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Karina Horsti

  2. Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, PL 16, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Karina Horsti

Authors
  1. Karina Horsti
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Correspondence to Karina Horsti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Argentinierstrasse 67/18, Vienna, Austria

    Michi Messer

  2. , Department of Biochemistry, Max F. Perutz Laboratories, Dr Bohr-Gasse 9/5, Vienna, 1030, Austria

    Renee Schroeder

  3. , Dpt. of Ling. and English Language, Lancaster University, County South, Lancaster, LA1 4YL, United Kingdom

    Ruth Wodak

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Horsti, K. (2012). Humanitarian Discourse Legitimating Migration Control: FRONTEX Public Communication. In: Messer, M., Schroeder, R., Wodak, R. (eds) Migrations: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0950-2_27

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