The Crisis of Migration Discourse: A Participatory approach for a new lexicon of Migration (CMD)

Professor Roza Tsagarousianou has been awarded and will be the Project Lead of a €1,300.000 HERA/CHANSE (Horizon) research grant for research on The Crisis of Migration Discourse: A Participatory approach for a new lexicon of Migration (CMD).

The research consortium brings together The University of Westminster (as the lead institution), The University of Reading, CNRS-Sciences po (France), The Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and the University of Alicante (Spain) alongside our three collaborating civil society organisations Migrant Voice (UK), ITASTRA (Italy) and COSPE (across the EU).

Prof. Tsagarousianou, will lead the consortium alongside acting as the Primary Investigator for work in the UK and Italy.  Her work as a Primary Investigator (UK and Italy) will be supported by her co-invesigators, Dr. Federica Mazzara (Humanities, University of Westminster) and Prof. Federico Faloppa (Linguistics, University of Reading).  The research teams in France, Denmark and Spain will be led by Dr. Helene Thiollet (CNRS-Sciences po, France), Dr. Anne Vestergaard (CBS, Denmark) and Dr. Alicia Ferrandez (Spain).

The research teams will engage with the  impact of discourses and policies that construct migration through the lens of crises, on people using unauthorized routes to enter the EU and the UK and, as a result, are illegalized.

To do so, CMD posits illegalized migrants as agents of change, working with them to impact the current narratives on migration and related practices and to enhance intercultural exchanges.

The project is carried out in four successive modules across the five countries.

Module one: CONSTRUCTION

CMD comparatively examines how institutional narratives and data production link migration to crises, illegality, and criminality and construct a hegemonic lexicon of migration that illegalizes specific types of migration while framing others as ‘meriting’ recognition (proof of deservingness).

Module two: DECONSTRUCTION

CMD collaborates with illegalized migrants to test alternatives to discourses of deservingness and to co-create an alternative lexicon of migration and a Toolkit for Action, that will challenge and deconstruct the current hegemonic lexicon of migration and are informed by their own experiences and narratives of displacement.

Module three: RECONSTRUCTION

CMD engages in intercultural exchanges with stakeholders in education, journalism, and advocacy to understand the motivations and interests of social actors in various national contexts and test with them more appropriate integration and empowerment strategies by relevant authorities across contexts.

Module four: TRAINING PROGRAMME DEVELOPMENT

A training programme will be developed that will consist of the Toolkit for Action, online training workshops, and YouTube training videos. The training programme aims to provide guidance to educators, media, and policymakers and to contribute towards shifting the current hegemonic narratives of migration.

Learn more at https://chanse.org/cmd/

Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash