Abstract
There is extensive research investigating framing of immigration in the media, particularly focusing on Western Europe, but scholars recently started to focus on Central Europe in this regard too. This literature generally documents that the media employ several main frames whose prevalence varies over time, media outlets, countries and following real-world events. Less research focuses on how political actors frame immigration, often using media data as a source to examine how framing of immigration differs across parties and time. There is yet less research, and practically none on Central Europe, that would investigate party framing of immigration. By focusing on the framing of immigration in plenary speeches in the Czech and Slovak parliaments between 2013 and 2017 (N = 1643), we try to fill those gaps in the literature. We only show that administrative and security framing was the most prominent during the timeframe, and that the framing of immigration in this case is generally negative and more so as the refugee crisis elapses. The regression analyses show that the use of frames by parliamentarians is related to party- (left-right, GAL-TAN, and European integration dimension placement), individual- (education) and context-level (migrant categories mentioned in a speech) characteristics. The placement of parties to which a particular parliamentarian belongs on the GAL/TAN dimension of conflict has the largest effect size. For the context-level variables, it is most interesting that immigrants from the MENA region, irregular immigrants and those with Muslim religious background are framed in significantly more negative security and cultural terms.
Presenters
Jan KovářSenior Researcher, Centre for European Politics, Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Migration, Central Europe, Framing
