{"id":10686,"date":"2026-05-27T07:40:24","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T05:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/?p=10686"},"modified":"2026-05-27T08:43:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T06:43:19","slug":"crises-dont-speak-for-themselves-they-are-interpreted-through-narratives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/crises-dont-speak-for-themselves-they-are-interpreted-through-narratives\/","title":{"rendered":"Crises Don\u2019t Speak for Themselves \u2013 They Are Interpreted Through Narratives"},"content":{"rendered":"

Migration and crisis are increasingly seen as interconnected, but their relationship is neither fixed nor self-explanatory. Migration may emerge as a response to crisis, a consequence of instability, or become framed as a crisis itself within receiving societies. Crises do not speak for themselves \u2013 they become politically and socially meaningful through the narratives built around them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the past decade, migration has often been framed through the language of crisis. Yet what counts as a \u201ccrisis\u201d is never self-evident. The arrival of refugees may be presented as a humanitarian responsibility by some political actors and as a threat to national security or social cohesion by others. Similarly, labor migration can be framed either as an economic necessity in aging societies or as a source of competition and instability. These interpretations matter because narratives are not neutral descriptions of reality. They shape how societies understand migration, what political responses seem acceptable, and who is perceived as belonging.<\/p>\n

Different actors \u2013 including governments, political parties, media organizations, and civil society groups \u2013 all participate in constructing these narratives. By emphasizing certain aspects of migration while downplaying others, they influence public emotions, political priorities, and collective identities. Migration debates are therefore not only about migration itself. They also reflect broader struggles over national identity, solidarity, democratic legitimacy, and how societies define belonging and community. Understanding migration today requires looking beyond events themselves and examining how they are communicated, contested, and transformed into political meaning.<\/p>\n

Politicization and Competing Agendas<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Precisely because migration crises can be interpreted in different ways, migration has become a central political battleground. Different actors seek to impose their own interpretations of migration by emphasizing different dimensions of the issue depending on the audiences they seek to mobilize. These often include economic contributions, cultural tensions, humanitarian obligations, demographic change, or security. This politicization is not uniform. It varies across countries, political systems, and moments of uncertainty. Yet a common pattern emerges: migration debates often simplify highly complex social realities into polarized political narratives. This can reinforce distrust, deepen social divisions, and leave less room for nuanced public discussion.<\/p>\n

At the same time, migration narratives are constantly contested rather than fixed. Media, advocacy groups, researchers, and policymakers all participate in shaping public understandings of migration. Some narratives frame migration primarily through crisis and threat, while others focus on solidarity, mobility, rights, or democratic inclusion.<\/p>\n

Attempts to \u201cchange the narrative\u201d have themselves become an increasingly visible political strategy. Yet these efforts also raise important questions. Positive narratives may still reduce migrants to symbolic categories: vulnerable victims, economically useful workers, or idealized examples of successful integration. In this sense, the challenge is not simply whether migration is framed positively or negatively, but who gets to define migration realities in the first place.<\/p>\n

Political Belonging in an Age of Uncertainty<\/strong><\/h5>\n

Migration narratives increasingly shape not only public opinion, but also political participation and democratic inclusion. Across Europe, political actors are adapting their rhetoric and strategies in response to changing demographic realities and new forms of political mobilization. Migration-related identities are becoming more central to electoral competition, public debate, and struggles over representation. At the same time, individuals with migration backgrounds often navigate multiple and sometimes contradictory forms of belonging. People can sometimes feel caught between worlds: perceived as \u201ctoo foreign\u201d in their countries of residence and \u201ctoo Western\u201d in their countries of origin. These tensions have an impact on not only identity formation, but also political trust, participation, and feelings of democratic inclusion.<\/p>\n

Such experiences challenge simplistic understandings of integration. Belonging is rarely linear or singular. Instead, many individuals navigate layered identities, transnational attachments, and unequal forms of recognition simultaneously. Political belonging therefore emerges not as a fixed status, but as an ongoing process shaped by institutions, social hierarchies, and public narratives.<\/p>\n

These developments also complicate conventional understandings of populism and exclusion. Some political actors increasingly engage in selective forms of inclusion, strategically appealing to particular minority groups while maintaining broader nationalist or exclusionary agendas. Migration politics therefore no longer operates through simple binaries between openness and exclusion, but through more differentiated and conditional forms of belonging.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, migration crises do not become politically meaningful on their own. Governments, political parties, media organizations, civil society actors, and researchers all participate in shaping how migration is understood and debated. Through competing narratives, these actors influence which interpretations become dominant, which political responses appear legitimate, and whose voices are included or excluded. Understanding migration today therefore also means understanding the actors who construct, contest, and circulate these narratives and how societies make sense of uncertainty and change through them.<\/p>\n

This blog post draws on the workshop on \u201cNarratives at the Crossroads: Migration, Polarization and Political Inclusion in Uncertain Times,\u201d organized on May 19, 2026, in collaboration with Prof. Mari-Liis Jakobson from Tallinn University.<\/em><\/p>\n

Maarja Vollmer<\/a> is a Doctoral Fellow at the University of Neuch\u00e2tel and nccr \u2013 on the move<\/a>, working within the project “Narratives of Crises and their Influence on Policies of Migration and Mobility<\/a>.\u201d Her research focuses on migration narratives, politicization, crisis framing, and political inclusion, examining how different actors construct and contest migration-related narratives across political and social contexts.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Migration and crisis are increasingly seen as interconnected, but their relationship is neither fixed nor self-explanatory. Migration may emerge as a response to crisis, a consequence of instability, or become framed as a crisis itself within receiving societies. Crises do not speak for themselves \u2013 they become politically and socially<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":381,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1421,6],"tags":[1469,992,1468,1451,1467,322,1466,716,1470],"coauthors":[1471],"class_list":["post-10686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-narratives-on-migration-in-times-of-crisis","category-politics","tag-democratic-participation","tag-europe","tag-migration-governance","tag-migration-narratives","tag-polarization","tag-policy-research","tag-political-inclusion","tag-politics","tag-public-discourse"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/381"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10686"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10689,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686\/revisions\/10689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10686"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nccr-onthemove.ch\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}