Title: “EU Policies and the Migrant Crisis: Problematic
Representations”
This presentation examines how political discourses on the migrant crisis in the EU have emphasised particular neoliberal constructions of representation in relation to ‘voluntary’ and ‘forced’ migration. It questions the discursive political contexts, which is focused on regaining border control and the preservation and strengthening of EU securitization mechanisms. In particular, it highlights how political dialogue has to a large extent negatively positioned asylum seekers, through particular representations, which function to maintain hostility yet fail to consider the uneven distribution of mobility within globalising processes. In particular, it brings into question the paradoxical nature of mobility where it becomes both a privilege and a stigma (Andersson, 2014). Within these representations, spaces for dialogue and deliberations relating to group rights and protections are all too frequently eroded and replaced by discussions that subtly produce symbolic notions of ‘disposability’, as a legitimate response to the crisis. This works alongside specific representations of asylum seekers as ‘criminal’ ‘undeserving’ and ‘deviant’ as more recently portrayed by political leaders with reference to migrants in Calais. Within these constructions the diverse and complex causes for movement and the qualitatively different situations and circumstances which people experience are all too frequently ignored.
Andersson, R. (2014) Illegality Inc., California; University of California Press