Rheindorf, Markus and Wodak, Ruth Emily (2018) Borders, Fences, and Limits—Protecting Austria From Refugees : Metadiscursive Negotiation of Meaning in the Current Refugee Crisis. Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies, 16 (1-2). pp. 15-38. ISSN 1556-2948
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Abstract
The so-called refugee crisis presents a field of discursive struggle over meanings in politics. In Austria, mediatized politics in 2015 and 2016 was dominated by metadiscursive negotiation of terminology related to building a border fence and setting a maximum limit on refugees. Both issues raised serious ideological and legal concerns and were thus largely euphemized; as responses to ever-increasing pressure from the political right, however, they were also intended as signals to voters. This article presents a discourse-historical study of the normalization of restrictive policies in the theoretical framework of border and body politics, otherness, and mediatization.