Citation

Galantino MG. Eur. J. Criminol. 2022; 19(2): 259-281.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, European Society of Criminology, Publisher SAGE Publishing)

DOI

10.1177/1477370819896213

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Over the last few years, terrorist attacks in European cities, together with the so-called 'refugee crisis', have (re)ignited a debate on whether there is an association between the two issues. Drawing on sociological approaches to risk and uncertainty, I claim that the discursive construction of causal linkages connecting refugees and migrants to terrorist activities is a fundamental passage in the process of social construction of migration as a threat. To identify the terrorism-migration linkages constructed in/through the media, this article examines the coverage of migration issues in two Italian and two German newspapers in 2015 and 2016, combining computer-assisted and qualitative content analysis. My findings reveal, firstly, how and in what circumstances the discourse on the terrorism threat is conflated with the discourse on migration. Then, the in-depth analysis of causal links in the coverage of four main terror attacks in Europe shows the predominance of a chain of causation linking terrorism to new migrants and refugees. Given the limited empirical research informing the debate over the migration-terrorism nexus, this study contributes to a better understanding of the process of social construction of migrants as threat objects.

Language: en

Keywords

media discourse; migration; migration–terrorism nexus; social construction of risk; Terrorism