The migration–terrorism nexus: An analysis of German and Italian press coverage of the ‘refugee crisis’
| Date | 01 March 2022 |
| Published date | 01 March 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370819896213 |
| Author | Maria Grazia Galantino |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370819896213
European Journal of Criminology
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1477370819896213
journals.sagepub.com/home/euc
The migration–terrorism
nexus: An analysis of German
and Italian press coverage of
the ‘refugee crisis’
Maria Grazia Galantino
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
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.
Keywords
Terrorism, migration, migration–terrorism nexus, social construction of risk, media discourse
Introduction
Over the last few years, the challenges posed by large migration flows and the terror
threat have become increasingly intertwined in political agendas and public debates. In
Corresponding author:
Maria Grazia Galantino, Department of Social Sciences and Economics – DISSE, Sapienza University of
Rome, Via Salaria 113, Rome, 00198, Italy.
Email: mariagrazia.galantino@uniroma1.it
896213EUC0010.1177/1477370819896213European Journal of CriminologyGalantino
research-article2019
Article
2022, Vol. 19(2) 259–281
2015, the arrival of over 1 million migrants and refugees at the borders of Europe and the
tragedy of thousands of deaths at sea changed the representation of the situation from a
‘migration phenomenon’ to a ‘refugee crisis’ (Guterres, 2015).1 In spite of its unprece-
dented scale, though, the 2015 migration crisis was the tail of an ongoing systemic crisis
affecting European migration and border policies (Hess and Kasparek, 2017). The
ambivalent and conflicting response of EU member states and their failure to find a
shared solution created a climate of uncertainty that inflamed the ongoing debate over
the legitimacy of incoming people to enter and stay, fuelling Europeans’ fears of facing
an ‘uncontrollable invasion’.
It is against this difficult if not hostile backdrop that the atrocious terror attacks in Paris
and other European cities materialized in 2015 and 2016, facilitating the crystallization of
a migration–terrorism nexus in media and political discourses. The idea that ‘[t]here are
terrorists pretending to be refugees, entering our countries to cause violence and destruc-
tion’ also became shared by large majorities across European publics (Ipsos, 2017).
The role of news reporting in contributing to shaping the understanding of migrants
as a threat to the cultural, economic and public security of host countries is well accounted
for in media studies (for example, Benson, 2013; Innes, 2010; Van Gorp, 2005). However,
this research rarely intersects the current debate on risk and uncertainty, which may offer
a valuable framework for understanding how specific issues and problems begin to be
perceived, staged and handled as risks.
A few studies suggest that migration can be understood in the light of risk theories
because risk is a constitutive part of migration, both at an individual level, in terms of
biographical risks, and at a collective level, in terms of risks to families, groups and
societies (Battistelli and Galantino, 2019; Galantino, 2017; Williams and Baláž, 2012).
Moreover, migration combines several attributes of the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 1992,
1999): migration risks affect everyone; expert knowledge and guidance is not only
insufficient but also dismissed in the public and political debate; rational arguments
grounded in empirical or logical foundations fail in the face of growing concerns and
fears; effective policy solutions elude policymakers. Indeed, today’s migration risks
turn out to be, at least in part, the (unintended) consequence of the failure of the very
projects designed to deal with migration and integration in late modernity (O’Brien,
1996). According to Bauman, migration (and the anxiety it generates) is both a conse-
quence of the ‘modern way of life’, which includes the production of ‘redundant people’
(Bauman, 2015), and an indicator of the uncertainty and insecurity in which we live
(Bauman, 2000, 2007). Contributions connecting migration issues to the theoretical
framework of risk sociology, however, rarely engage in systematic empirical analysis,
particularly of media coverage.
In attempting to address this shortcoming, this study examines the construction of
migration risks in media discourse. Its theoretical framework relies on sociological
literature about the social construction of risk and, more specifically, on contributions
focusing on how issues and problems are defined as risky through the construction of
linkages between objects and putative harm (Hilgartner, 1992; Boholm and Corvellec,
2011). Drawing on this perspective, I assume that migration is (constructed as) a risk
object in the sense that it is the entity to which harmful consequences of different sorts
260 European Journal of Criminology 19(2)
To continue reading
Request your trial