WP3: Constructing the Crisis
Actors, Representations and Narratives
This Work Package explores the contested interpretations of the migration/refugee crisis. It seeks to understand how different actors, at different levels, apprehend ongoing migration-related realities and produce discourses and narratives to make sense of them. Actors produce specific sets of discourses and worldviews, which are of a double nature: cognitively, discourses support the frameworks through which actors perceive reality and act; tactically, discourses enable actors to justify their interventions and legitimize their position. A key assumption behind this WP is therefore that the crisis calls for actors to reconsider their discourses and to produce new narratives to adapt to a changing reality and re-assess their legitimacy therein (Utting 2006). The WP will also propose a multilevel and multi-situated approach to crisis narratives. While the ongoing crisis is predominantly located in the euro-Mediterranean region, it is interpreted at very different levels by different actors. IOs, for example, transform a regional crisis into a global crisis: by reacting to a specific crisis through global initiatives (such as the Global Compacts), they provide an interpretation of the crisis that spans the globe. In a similar way, governments of countries that are somewhat unaffected by the crisis may develop a crisis narrative that borrows from the euro-Mediterranean region.
Partners Involved: Sciences Po (Lead), University of Liège, GIGA, EUBA, IFPO, University of Milan, SOAS, Sabanci University.
Deliverables
D3.1 Migration as crisis
In this article, Céline Cantat (Sciences Po), Hélène Thiollet (Sciences Po), and Antoine Pécoud (Sciences Po) introduce the migration as crisis framework to address the contingent connection between subjective construction and objective migration processes, to make sense of “migration crisis” discourses, and explain both their pervasiveness and contingency.
D3.2 Migration as Crisis - Special Issue
This Special Issue from Céline Cantat (Sciences Po), Hélène Thiollet (Sciences Po), and Antoine Pécoud (Sciences Po) aims at developing a critical and constructivist approach to the notion of ‘migration crisis’, and investigates the way in which ongoing migration/refugee crises build upon – and support - specific representations and strategies among the different actors involved in debating and governing migration, including state authorities, but also local governments, international organisations, the media, and courts. While the focus is mainly on the Euro-Mediterranean region, the Special Issue looks not only at the relationships between the EU and its immediate neighbourhoods, but also at migration crises outside this region.
D3.3 Working paper on the construction of the crisis-invasion discourse by different stakeholders in Italy
An initial output of MAGYC’s third work package, this working paper authored by Iraklis Dimitriadis (UNIMI) seeks to survey the existing empirical evidence on the construction and reproduction of the “crisis-invasion” discourse in Italy with reference to the arrival and settlement of refugees since 2012.
D3.4 Policy Brief on the Asylum Management Process at the local level
Based on a research on the asylum governance in Italy, this policy brief authored by Iraklis Dimitriadis and Maurizio Ambrosini (UNIMI) looks at narratives of experts active at different levels, analyzing how they make sense of conflictual situations related to the arrival and settlement of asylum seekers and refugees in local communities.
D3.5 Conference papers : "The Representation of the “Refugee Crisis” in Italy: Constructing a Crisis-Invasion Discourse" and "The governance of asylum issue as a battleground: empirical evidences on (non)-deportation of rejected asylum seekers in Italy"
These deliverables stem from the Neuchâtel Graduate Conference of Migration and Mobility Studies of september 2019 and the academic workshop entitled "Durable solutions for rejected asylum seekers?" at Erasmus University College Rotterdam in January 2020. The first paper, by Iraklis Dimitriadis (UNIMI), seeks to understand how crisis and invasion discourses have been shaped in Italy. It explores how different actors, at different levels, apprehend ongoing migration-related realities and (re)produce crisis invasion discourses and narratives to make sense of themStarting from the Italian experience, the second paper by Iraklis Dimitriadis and Maurizio Ambrosini (UNIMI) asserts that the governance of immigration, especially at local level, can be considered a “battleground” involving different actors.
D3.6 Framing asylum at the local level: experts’ narratives of conflictual dynamics in the post-reception period in Italy
This article from Iraklis Dimitriadis (UNIMI) and Maurizio Ambrosini (UNIMI) investigates the ways in which experts at different levels make sense of how the refugee crisis has unfolded in local communities in Italy.
D3.7 Working paper : Turkish perceptions of the EU migration deal based on Turkish Parliamentary Debates
This working paper authored by Samet Apaydin and Meltem Muftuler-Bac (Sabanci University) provides an in-depth analysis of the Turkish Parliamentary debates over the Syrian refugees, and assesses how the Turkish migration deal with the EU has highlighted the existing political cleavages in the country. It demonstrates the extent to which migration governance challenges are projected onto political deliberations at the domestic level, while illuminating the domestic-foreign linkages over migratory policies.
D3.8 Website: Open access timelines and mapping of the revolution and war in Syria (2011-2017) based on narratives (videos, images, testimonies) from below
This website from Kamel Doraï contains a database of decisions, testimonials, reports, official documents, and correspondence that you can view chronologically, download, or be redirected to further resources. You can also visualize data through graphs and charts that serve your research objectives of analyzing and comparing policy responses in light of the ‘crisis’.
