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ABSTRACT
The anti-immigration continuum of public attitude-media-politics has undergone changes in the course of the “refugee crisis” in Germany. By examining migrant representations and discursive events taking place in 2015 and early 2016, we will show the volatility of the recent discourse on refugees. A historical/critical discourse analysis will show how new topoi arose and old topoi of the security/power paradigm have lastly reconquered the discourse. Using newspaper coverage, we discuss discursive events in three main sections: borders, arrival, and presence. Discursive shifts have taken place that have had an impact on the configuration of migration categories such as migrants or refugees.
Acknowledgments
We thank the editors of this Special Issue, the anonymous referees and the participants of the international symposium “Mediatisation and the Politicisation of the Refugee Crisis” at the European University Institute for comments to earlier versions of this article.
Notes
1. Der Spiegel, July 10, 1973.
2. One of the popular methods of including the impact of social media are analyses based on Twitter data (see e.g., Barberá, Citation2015). For the German context this did not seem plausible to employ, firstly, because Twitter is not very popular in Germany (the number of users is significantly lower than in the UK, for instance) and, secondly, because the available software to analyze content (including “sentiment analysis” software) does not include the German language. Other social media platforms such as Facebook do not provide data to researchers at all. Thus, although we are aware that discourses cease to be only operated through the channels of mainstream media, such as newspapers and television, our analysis will be based on such media sources.
3. Our method of building our text corpus is similar to the one developed and used by Baker et al. (Citation2008) or Vollmer (Citation2017b). After cleaning the data set, we have included 72 articles in our final corpus.
4. Not to be confused with the Springer Verlag founded by Julius Springer, the Springer Press is a term related to the Axel Springer publishing company that is mainly associated with tabloid/right-wing newspapers such as the Bild.
5. The acronym PEGIDA stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West. PEGIDA is a right-wing populist movement particularly strong in parts of Sachsen, but also Sachsen-Anhalt and other eastern German Länder. PEGIDA organized marches in the city of Dresden, which were drawing ever-increasing numbers of participants (allegedly up to 30,000, which it turned out later to be extremely overestimated). It drew particular attention through hostility toward media—journalists were regularly shouted at with the slogan Lügenpresse (lying press). The enmity concerning the press was related both to the mostly critical coverage about PEGIDA itself and to the often positive coverage of refugees.
6. But also already stated in 2013 by for instance the liberal Die Tageszeitung (October 12, 2013), yet also similarly by the right-conservative TV station RTL (October 12, 2013).
12. The apparent indolence can also be interpreted as a result of the asymmetric structure inscribed in the asylum system of the European Union, in which the states of first arrival (Spain, Greece, Italy) according to the Dublin regulations have to shoulder the administrative, financial, and political costs of refugee migration.
13. http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146977925/CDU-erwaegt-Ausnahmen-vom-Mindestlohn-fuer-Fluechtlinge.html http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146977925/CDU-erwaegt-Ausnahmen-vom-Mindestlohn-fuer-Fluechtlinge.html
14. The demand for an upper limit was raised soon after Merkel's decision by many delegates of the CDU in preparation for a party convention. However, Merkel was able to achieve a compromise that did not contain the critical term upper limit (which would have been in conflict with both constitutional law and European Asylum law).
15. For instance, the Daily Mirror, September 3, 2015.
16. The decisive point here is that the horror of the image does not reveal itself immediately but is built upon an association that seems to emerge for spectators at first sight—that is, the image not of a dead but sleeping child. We arrived at this interpretation through various comments of social media users, which we systematically scanned for the time span in question. This is assumingly also one of the reasons why the image resonated strongly with the public and reached very high circulation rates. It has shifted public opinion toward more empathy, as Vis and Goriunova (Citation2015) have argued.
17. Familiarity was expressed, e.g., in statements such as “This could have been my child.” See http://time.com/4022765/aylan-kurdi-photo/ or: “Aylan, I have a son who's not much older than you” http://www.mamamia.com.au/refugee-toddler-aylan-kurdi-has-touched-hearts-worldwide/
20. The term was coined by Katrin Göring Eckhardt of the Green party. See http://www.bayerische-staatszeitung.de/staatszeitung/politik/detailansicht-politik/artikel/ein-septembermaerchen-mit-fluechtlingen.html)
21. The proposition “to be proud to be German” in the German context is particularly associated with nationalist ideologies and usually rejected by social democrat, left-wing, and liberal speakers. http://www.bayerische-staatszeitung.de/staatszeitung/politik/detailansicht-politik/artikel/ein-septembermaerchen-mit-fluechtlingen.html
22. Unfortunately we were not given permission to use the image.
23. Unfortunately we were not given permission to use the image.
27. Unfortunately we were not given permission to use the image. Please go to: http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/fluechtlinge-sagen-danke-fuer-die-b-z-sonderbeilage
28. In a critical study of the role (Arlt & Storz, Citation2011) the Bild played in the Euro crisis and the debate about Greece's debts, while Arlt & Storz (Citation2011) also analyzed to what extent Bild had an agenda-setting function in the political arena. Both politicians and journalists, the authors claim (based on expert interviews), follow the newspapers' agenda on a daily basis.
32. http://www.rp-online.de/politik/eu/politiker-warnen-terroristen-nicht-mit-fluechtlingen-gleichsetzen-aid-1.5563716http://www.rp-online.de/politik/eu/politiker-warnen-terroristen-nicht-mit-fluechtlingen-gleichsetzen-aid-1.5563716
34. Infratest Dimap, November 2015, see also ZDF Politbarometer.
35. In a survey conducted by the online edition of the weekly journal Die ZEIT, a huge majority of volunteers (more than 90% of 3,486 participants) said the Paris attacks did not affect their engagement; some answered that they were even more motivated. See http://www.zeit.de/2015/50/fluechtlingen-helfen-umfrage-weiteres-engagement
36. This is emphasized here, since in the case of war refugees, young male adults might be considered as equally or maybe even more in danger of being victimized, as warring parties are particularly interested in recruiting them.
38. At Spiegel Online, online edition of the most influential weekly magazine in Germany, the commentary section of many articles regarding the refugee issue were closed by the editors due to the flood of hate speech. Other media outlets utilize software to filter content. Out of 117 news outlets, 27 declared that they took censoring or filtering measures. See e.g., http://meedia.de/2016/03/01/ueberfordert-vom-leser-hass-zeitungsredaktionen-schraenken-kommentarfunktion-ein/
45. What comes to mind here is the increasing realization towards the end of 2015 that there would be no political solution on the European level, mainly through the rejection of any meaningful re-distribution scheme by a critical minority of member states.