This paper investigates the Danish newspaper “Politiken’s” portrayal of the people forced to flee thefall of Afghanistan in August 2021 and the war in Ukraine beginning February 2021. It compares thefindings about the two groups of refugees. I use Tajfel and Turner’s (2011) social identity theory, DeGenova’s (2013) theory of the border spectacle, and Scheel and Squire’s (2014) theory of theproduction of forced migrants as illegal migrants, to explain the impact of Politiken’s discourse has onthe social reality. The method used is Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA). Thepaper finds that there is clear difference in the way Politiken portrays people forced to flee from thetwo countries. Politiken contributes to a discourse where Afghan refugees are labelled as the out-groupand categorized as illegal migrants. Opposite, the discourse used to portray the Ukrainian refugees ispositive and reinforces their belonging to the Danish in-group. They are categorized as legal migrantsand deserving of protection. This discourse extends to the social reality, and a good example is theexemption law, urgently passed to allow immediate protection of Ukrainian refugees arriving inDenmark. This paper adds an additional layer to existing research by comparing the two recent eventsof Ukraine and Afghanistan.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:mau-53590 |
Date | January 2022 |
Creators | Larsen, Ulrikke |
Publisher | Malmö universitet, Institutionen för globala politiska studier (GPS) |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0017 seconds