Narratives of Immigration in the EU

This book examines the representation of migrants and the European Union (EU) in the Romanian and British press, adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis approach to analyse a corpus of newspaper articles published between 1st January 2006 and 31st December 2018. The analysis reveals that through conceptual metaphors, migrants were likened to objects, ships, illegal goods, waves, flows, liquids, invaders, enemies and threats. The key themes identified in the analysis are the quantification and the ‘otherisation’ of migrants, as well as their portrayal as economic burdens or invaders in their destination countries. With regard to the EU, the author explores how both countries’ memberships have followed different trajectories than those of other member states, ever since their accession to the EU bloc. The novelty of this research lies in the diachronic comparison of the representations of migrants and the European Union in Romania, a country characterised by emigration, versus the United Kingdom, a country characterised by immigration. This volume will be of interest to academics and students concerned with issues to do with migration and the EU, including those in fields such as political communication, migration policy, sociology of migration, and the language of media.