Narratives about irregularised migrants in Poland

This report provides results from the corpus analysis of media, political, and civil society texts conducted within Work Package 4, “Discourses, perceptions and counternarratives” in the project “Improving the living and labour conditions of irregularised migrant households in Europe” (I-CLAIM). This report presents quantitative and qualitative analyses of each corpus and compares them. The data was collected for 2019-2023 and included the most prominent narratives about irregular migration and the specific linguistic and terminological features used during this time.

The analysis reveals that dominant narratives around irregular migration were predominantly linked to attempts to enter Poland without sufficient documentation or bypassing legal channels rather than stay (overstay) or work-related aspects. The humanitarian crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border was a central concern in all three corpora. These irregularities were framed within three main narratives:

• Securitisation, focused on border and national security, emphasising the role of control institutions and depicting migration as a dehumanised process,
• Rationalisation, concentrated on aims to develop migration management and control (e.g. about labour market),
• Humanitarianism, articulated primarily by social organisations, emphasises human rights protection, institutional violence, subjective experiences and the challenges migrants face.

The analysis also illustrates that other aspects of irregular migration did not attract significant attention. Work-related aspects were less salient compared to border crossings and arrivals, focusing on the irregular employment and work conditions experienced by migrants. The COVID-19 pandemic was not presented as in the collected corpora as a macro-topic, but as a context (e.g. related to a situation in migrant facilities).

Several differences were noticed between the corpora. Media and political corpora used uncountable nouns and large numbers (e.g. thousands, flow) to strengthen narratives of insecurity and dehumanise migrants. In contrast, the civil society corpus tends to emphasise the personal perspectives of individuals who experienced pushbacks and violence from the border guards, as well as activists and volunteers operating at the border. This corpus also highlights the role of public institutions in producing irregularities. It also included the most diverse representation of social categories, reflecting intersectional vulnerabilities (e.g., ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+). The media and political corpora reinforced narratives of migration irregularity through the lens of crime and crises (e.g., trafficking, aggression). The civil society corpus showed a different perspective on irregularity, emphasising the issues of institutional violence, xenophobia, and migrant discrimination. The study demonstrated that the civil society corpus provided counter-narratives to the politics and media corpora, focusing on humanitarian concerns and human rights violations as central issues in the representations of irregular migration.

Illegal appeared as a primary term used in all three corpora, as did plural forms of words migrant(s), refugee(s), immigrant(s), and foreigner(s) and uncountable nouns (e.g. flow) and large numbers (e.g. thousands) clearly dominate in the analysed material which illustrates that the narratives presented migration from the perspective of a threat and portrayed migrants mainly as collective others. Migration was also associated with control and borders. The analysis of the geographical dimension underlines the persistent division of EU/ Western states with the predominance of a national Polish (Poland) context versus third countries, especially Belarus, the Middle East or African countries.