The public discourse on migration, irregularity and work in Italy

This I-CLAIM report presents findings from a comprehensive corpus-based analysis of discourses
surrounding irregular migration across Italian media, politics, and civil society1. Our research posits that the
discourses produced within these contexts play a significant role in the representation and narrative
construction of irregularity as a matter of public concern. Furthermore, we argue that these narratives have
a substantial impact on shaping public discourses, perceptions, and actions regarding the broader
phenomenon of migration.

For each of the three public domains, we collected corpora that we then analysed using quantitative methods
of corpus linguistics as well as qualitative methods of discourse analysis. This report covers the main
quantitative and qualitative findings related to lexical choices and narrative structures, and provides a
comparative analysis across the three domains of media, politics, and civil society. In particular, it pays special
attention to the issue of labour and exploitation, which emerged as particularly significant for the media and
the civil society texts.Details on the methods used can be found in a separate methodological note.