The Refugee Paradox: Unravelling Dutch Media discourse and the influence of policy
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2023-06-12
Language
en
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Abstract
The influx of Syrian refugees since 2015 and Ukrainian refugees since 2022 has been a major
challenge for the European Union and its member states. The European Union has responded
differently to the two groups of refugees through its policies. However, the European Union is
not alone in this regard. Studies have shown that newspapers describe the two groups differently
in their articles. Since, newspapers have a significant influence on public opinion, it is
interesting to know how a discourse is constructed. Much research has been done regarding
that, however, there is not yet research that examines whether policy shapes discourse. This is
also for societal reasons interesting since it gives more insight in how people’s perspectives are
shaped. Therefore, this thesis examines: 1) the discourse in the Dutch media regarding Syrian
and Ukrainian refugees, 2) how these discourses differ from each other, and 3) whether these
differences arise due to the completely different European migration policies. These questions
are answered using two separate discourse analyses, one for each group and each separated in
two time periods.
The first analysis shows that the dominant discourse on Syrian refugees in the Dutch
media discourse is the security discourse. There is, however, much variability per newspaper
and per time period. The second analysis shows that the dominant discourse on Ukrainian
refugees in the Dutch media is the humanitarian discourse. That discourse is the most commondiscourse for all newspapers included in the analyses, and for both time periods. A comparison
on Syrian and Ukrainian refugees shows a different treatment by the EU, the Dutch government,
Dutch citizens, and the Dutch newspapers. This thesis concludes that, by using the theory of
Michael Foucault about discourse and power, the European migration policy partly explains
this difference in discourses used for both groups.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen