The language used to describe migration in politics and media—words like “crisis,” “illegal,” and “threat”—shapes how governments treat people crossing borders, and this project aims to rewrite that vocabulary from the ground up. Current public narratives frame migration as an exceptional emergency that undermines national identity, feeding xenophobic hate speech and policies that criminalise people using unauthorised routes. With environmental degradation expected to double the number of migrants crossing to Europe over the next decade, these crisis-driven discourses are likely to intensify. The project argues that this framing is not neutral: it directly shapes policy-making and denies agency to the people it labels “illegal.” The research works in three stages: first, examining how current narratives around illegal migration are constructed and influence policy; second, deconstructing those narratives through direct, participatory encounters with illegalised migrants; and third, building a new “just” lexicon of migration that could shift how governments manage mobility. If successful, the project could offer concrete alternatives to the language of emergency and criminality—tools that policymakers, journalists, and civil society groups could use to reframe public debate and foster solidarity rather than division.
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Migration is often seen as an exceptional phenomenon, as a crisis occurring beyond the realms of ‘normal’ national development and change. It is viewed as challenging and undermining the coherence of nation-states and national bounded identities and cultures (Arendt 1951; Malkki 1992; Cresswell 2006). Such narratives have also strengthened populist and nationalistic movements that have spread divisions across Europe and have contributed to linking migration to perceptions of threat, often coupled with an increasing deal of xenophobic and anti-migrant hate speech (Wodak 2015; van Houtum & Bueno 2020; Appiah 2018; Dennison & Geddes 2018). As environmental degradation is set to double the numbers of migrants crossing to Europe over the next decade (UNHCR - Refugee Statistics 2022), the project attempts to both highlight the complex role of public narratives in shaping responses to the perceived migration ‘crisis’ and to explore novel ways to deescalate narratives of illegality and emergency. CMD will engage with the impact that discourses and policies that construct migration through the lens of crisis have on people using unauthorised routes (and are therefore illegalised (Tsagarousianou 2022; Rozakou 2019; De Genova 2017) to enter the EU and the UK. It aims to posit illegalised migrants as agents of change via impacting on the narratives of crisis and of illegality and related policy agendas by 1. examining the current construction of narratives around ‘illegal’ migration and their impact on policy-making (construction) 2. deconstructing such narratives through intercultural and participatory encounters with illegalised migrants(deconstruction) and 3. reconstructing a ‘just’ lexicon of migration that aims to challenge and shift current practices of migration management, based on the illegalization and criminalization of specific mobilities. We argue for narratives and policies which will ultimately foster solidarity with the collective migrant ‘other’.
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