CALL FOR PAPERS: Migrants’ voices in discourse: between top-down and bottom-up perspectives on migration
Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Università La Sapienza, Roma, 30th May 2025Workshop Organizer: Prof. Franco Zappettini CDS literature has long scrutinised how migration is discursively constructed and to what societal effect. Research foci have extensively ranged from discrimination and racialisation to the increasing politicization and mediatization of moral panic and resentment towards migrant groups or individuals (van Dijk,2017: Krzyżanowski, Triandafyllidou, and Wodak, 2018). These different strands of scholarship have provided extremely valuable insights into the discourses of top-down, institutional actors (e.g. government, politicians and mass media) and, only to a lesser degree, bottom-up perspectives by advocate organisations (Lampropoulou and Johnson, 2023) and migrants themselves (Bennett, 2018). As worldwide migratory patterns increase – sustained by economic, social, and environmental pushes – migration (management) continues to be a highly mobilised topic in public discourses. In particular, issues of (political) representation and (lack of) agency remain key concerns in discursive practices around migration which call for close scrutiny. In this one-day workshop we strive to account for the interplay between discourses and social hierarchies, highlighting power asymmetries between actors andexclusion dynamics engendered by discursive practices on migration. We depart from mainstream top-down approaches, focusing instead on bottom-up perspectives. We highlight migrants as actors, emphasizing the situated subjectivity of their lived experiences and any opportunities to have their voices heard. Methodologically we privilege affective and ethnographic approaches to discourse, welcoming interdisciplinary contributions (including from the civil society and outside academia) that take a critical perspective to the issues outlined. Rather than focusing on one single geographical context, we try to capture the overarching dynamics of different transnational and transcultural realities of migration including, but not limited to, the effect of diasporas on migrants’ politically awareness and the political mobilisation of their social capital. We welcome contributions that broadly speak to the workshop themes including working papers. Please send abstracts to franco.zappettini@uniroma1.it by 30th March(max 300 words including bibliography). Bibliography Bennett, S. (2018) Constructions of migrant integration in British public discourse: Becoming British. Bloomsbury:LondonKrzyżanowski, M., Triandafyllidou, A., & Wodak, R. (2018). The Mediatization and the Politicization of the “Refugee Crisis” in Europe. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 16(1–2), 1–14.Lampropoulou, S., P. Johnson (2023) ‘[P]aying back to the community and to the British people’: Migration as transactional discourse in curated stories by UK charity organisations’. Discourse & Society Vol. 34, Issue 5, Pages 598-616van Dijk, T. (2017) Discourse and Migration. In E. Yalaz and R. Zapata-Barrero (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research in European Migration Studies. Berlin: Springer.