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The chapter analyses the anti-immigration political parties in the European Union (EU) as a challenge for the EU values such as human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, rule of law, and human rights. As the main constituents of the political groups in the European Parliament, the single elected body of the EU, the parties in the member states require a special scrutiny. In this context, the study aims at understanding and exposing how anti-immigration political parties in the EU discursively construct immigration as a threat. Taking into consideration their salient rise in the 2019 European election, it focuses on the discourses of the relevant parties delivered during the debates of the first half of the ninth (2019–2024) parliamentary term by using critical discourse analysis as its theoretical and methodological framework. The main argument of the study is that these political parties securitize immigration within three main discourse topics: immigration as a security threat, as an economic threat, and as a cultural threat.

Political parties and marketers have for centuries employed visuals as effective means of conveying their messages. Yet surprisingly, little has been written on the evident interplay between the visual rhetoric of political campaigns and destination image. Influenced by Foucault’s notion of subjectivity and drawing on critical discourse analysis, this chapter analyzes the visual rhetoric of the radical right-wing Swiss People’s Party campaign posters in order to explore the relationship between political rhetoric and destination image. It is concluded that while this image of Switzerland may be negatively influenced by the rhetoric of the party, the reflex of the state may inadvertently perpetuate cultural fundamentalism and exclusion.

This chapter considers the political controversy in Britain over the lifting of restrictions of freedom of movement on European Union (EU) citizens from Bulgaria and Romania in January 2014. The response of the then Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government centred on altering the rules on the payment of welfare benefits to potential new EU immigrants such that they would not be entitled to claim these benefits for 3 months after entry to the United Kingdom. This policy led to a split in the coalition, with the Liberal Democrat leadership claiming that it was a panicked move by the majority Conservative coalition partner, and moreover that it was a blatant attempt to appeal the electorate in an effort to be seen to be doing something to stop the welfare benefit system from being abused by ‘foreigners’. The backdrop to this political fracas centred on the economic contribution of East European immigrants to Britain and the claim and counterclaim over the issues jobs, welfare benefits and services such as English language support in schools. These contentious issues are examined in terms of an analysis of online comments to posted in reaction to a political interview with Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, who claimed that the Conservatives were attempting to placate public disquiet over immigration as a response to the rising popularity of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

Looks at the contemporary debate on US immigration, focusing particularly on the increasing articulation of eugenics. Notes that, at times of economic and moral crisis, biological generalizations tend to resurface to provide support for the existing system of privilege and rights, and that the information superhighway provides the perfect vehicle for rapidly spreading beliefs and information. Addresses three specific issues – the genetically determined traits and behaviours of specific racial groups, culture as an expression of biological characteristics, and immigration destroying the racial purity of American society. Outlines briefly US history of immigration. Airs the current concerns on US immigration – pinpointing that concern lies not in immigration per se., which has declined in the last decade, but in the changing national origin of new immigrants, that is immigrants are now mainly Latin American or Asian, which is seen as a threat to Anglo‐Saxon hegemony. Refers to the work of the Pioneer Fund, exploring human variation through the racial basis of intelligence and propensity to violence and/or crime. Claims that scientific language has been adapted to reinforce worries about immigration reducing the supremacy of America’s culture.

Departing from the assumption that discourse is both socially constituted and constitutive, and that social reality is co-constructed by the institutions of mass communication, this chapter takes under scrutiny media representation of the recent refugee crisis in Europe. The objective behind it is to maximise the validity of the Media Proximization Approach (MPA), drawing on the insights from Critical Discourse Studies, cognitive linguistics and corpus linguistics, in explicating how the media can potentially impact on the salience of issues and thus on public perception of problems and threats along with measures to be taken to deal with them. Examining the data from Poland, a European Union member state from Central Europe, criticised for its anti-refugee stance and refusal to accept the assigned quotas of migrants, and, importantly, the country ‘experiencing’ migrant crisis without refugees, we look at the role of word co-occurrence patterns in the discursive representation of refugees and immigrants in Rzeczpospolita daily and Niezależna.pl, the Polish right-wing press. The analysis, of both quantitative and qualitative nature, focuses on lexical associations of two nouns, uchodźca ‘refugee’ and imigrant ‘immigrant’, and their role as epistemic, axiological and emotional proximization triggers in the process of mediated construction of crisis and European security.

Purpose – The present study looks at the dynamic process of Mexican immigrant children and youth's civic engagement through their participation in community and family activities. In particular, it explores how their collaboration in a grassroots, immigrant community-based Centro in New York City allows for civic engagement. We demonstrate how active community participation, in the form of civic engagement, shapes children and youth's citizenship constructions.Methodology – Based on extensive participant observations and focus group interviews, this article demonstrates how children and youth's civic engagement is mediated by their integration and contributions to family and community civic activities and how these activities inform children and youth's knowledge of citizenship discourse. We present evidence that demonstrates that children and youth's involvement and participation in protests, rallies, volunteer activities, as well as the creation of a booklet, associated with immigration, human rights, and social justice, organized through the Centro Guadalupano, facilitated their knowledge about illegality and citizenship issues.Findings – Findings suggest that when indigenous Mexican children and youth are integrated into the important activities of their community, as active and engaged members, they develop a deeper understanding of civic engagement and what it means to be a participatory “citizen.”Research implications – The present study provides a starting point for future research on the importance of and possibilities for child and youth civic engagement in grassroots community organizations. For example, children and youth learn that through active civic participation and community contributions, they are able to challenge dominant discourse on immigration, human rights, and citizenship. This study sheds light on the value of involving children and youth in civic engagement opportunities – a process that can facilitate the construction of citizenship among marginalized groups, particularly undocumented Mexican immigrants from indigenous regions.Value – The findings presented extend broader discourses on the politics of immigration and citizenship, and also challenge, to some extent, mainstream constructions of children and youth. More research in these areas is needed; our paper is a small contribution to the emerging field of indigenous and immigrant children and youth's political socialization and activism.

This article engages with the framework of performativity to unpack ethical challenges of interviewing migrants in the setting of shared ethnic background of researchers and participants. From a temporal perspective of shifting contexts from a shared space of the research process, to the post-research reciprocity management, it focusses on the particular aspect of disclosure.

Drawing on several qualitative studies performed by the authors as Polish migrant researchers with Polish migrant communities in Norway, Germany and the United Kingdom, the article documents the ethical challenges that come from a shifting “audience” of the research performance.

Specifically, it discusses how the researchers perform their roles in the field with the focus on rapport building (relational disclosure), to then addressing how this performance changes when the dissemination of findings (representational disclosure) begins and continues over time.

This article contributes to the long-standing anthropological debate on self-reflection in the field. Also, demythologizing the relations between a researcher and participants, as well as cautioning research by reporting difficulties at different stages of the research process, will likely make it easier for future researchers who may now be better prepared and anticipate the complexities of doing fieldwork. From a temporal perspective, it can also help a broader scientific community avoid pitfalls from presenting unfavourable results prematurely. Thus, the authors hope that this paper may sensitize migration scholars to the possible predicaments in the process of interviewing their co-ethnics.

A methodological innovation lies in a clear focus on the cluster of ethical disclosure dilemmas and the article contributes to a lively debate on ethics of “insider research” in migration studies.