The legitimation of migrants´ acceptance by Members of the European Parliament

KROTKÝ, Jan. The legitimation of migrants´ acceptance by Members of the European Parliament. In IMISCOE PhD Led Workshop on Norms and Values. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: The legitimation of migrants´ acceptance by Members of the European Parliament
• Authors: KROTKÝ, Jan.
• Edition: IMISCOE PhD Led Workshop on Norms and Values, 2021.

Other information

• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Keywords in English: legitimation, pro-immigration advocavy, European Parliament

Abstract

Migration issues have become one of the driving topics influencing the political environment in the European Union. Scholars agree that ‘anti-immigrant’ and securitized politics and discourses mainly drive the migration policy . However, to get the whole picture about migration discourse, it is needy to look at the ‘other side’, namely, how migrant rights advocates (‘pro-immigrant’ Members of the European Parliament) legitimate the potential acceptance of migrants, refugees, or asylum seekers, by applying linguistically sensitive critical discourse analysis. The results show that ‘pro-immigrant’ members of the European Parliament use all four main categories of legitimation, such as authorization, moral evaluation, rationalization, and mythopoesis, through which ‘politics of pity’ passes. Moreover, this contribution revealed an unspoken potential of the human security approach, the theoretic concept by which the study is framed. The Members of the European Parliament use its elements in their speech acts, but they do not refer to it. The article argues that using the human security approach in migration discourse and, consequently, in migration measures might be attractive for actors across the political spectrum.