Resisting dehumanization: citizen voices and acts of solidarity

ABSTRACT

Recent years have seen an increase in the influx of asylum-seekers in Scandinavia, and in Denmark this has led to ever-tighter immigration control. This article discusses emerging practices of refugee solidarity and resistance to migration policy in Danish civil society in the wake of what has been referred to as the European refugee crisis. To accomplish this purpose, I analyse how participants in Facebook discussions construe topoi and attitudes when facing the ethical dilemma of respecting the law versus showing concern for humans in need, in line with what Foucault (1983. The subject and Power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press) has referred to as ‘ethical self-formation’. This is illustrated through a case study of an incident from September 2015, when a member of a Danish City Council offered private shelter to immigrants on their way to Norway. The incident led to legal proceedings in August 2016 for what the defendant referred to as ‘the offense of helping fellow human beings in need’. The study is informed by Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing Discourse. Textual analysis for social research. London and New York: Routledge; Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and governmentality theory (Foucault, M. (1983). The subject and Power. In H. Dreyfus & P. Rabinow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (pp. 208–226). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–78. (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan; McIlvenny, P., Klausen, J. Z., & Lindegaard, L. B. (2016). Studies of Discourse and Governmentality. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins). Data include media representations and facebook comments published during 2016. The analytical approach combines topos analysis (Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (Eds.). (2010). Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage; Wodak, R. (2015). The politics of fear. London and New York: Sage) and appraisal analysis to tease out evaluative meaning.

KEYWORDS:

• immigration
• discursive discrimination
• populism
• solidarity
• governmentality
• topoi
• appraisal analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Inger Lassen is Professor of Discourse and Communication at Aalborg University. She obtained a PhD-degree in linguistics and professional practice in 1999. Until 2016 she was director of the doctoral programme Discourse and Contemporary Culture at Aalborg University. Since 2011 she has participated actively in a capacity-building project with Kenya, Uganda and Nepal. She currently teaches and supervises undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD-students within the fields of genre, discourse and organizational studies. Her publications include one monograph and two co-edited anthologies entitled ‘Mediating Ideology in Text and Image’ and ‘Living with Patriarchy’ published by Benjamins. She publishes widely in international journals. Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Aalborg 9220, Denmark Email: [email protected].