Abstract
Irregular migration has become a politically and socially charged topic in Germany, shaping public sentiment and electoral outcomes alike. This article presents findings from a large-scale discourse analysis that examines how ‘irregular migration’ and the figure of the ‘irregular migrant’ are constructed across political and media discourse. Irregularised migrants, whose legal status falls outside regular residency, are rendered vulnerable to exclusion, precarity, and heightened control. Drawing on a corpus of over 6000 texts (67 million tokens) from major newspapers and parliamentary sources (2019–2023), the study investigates how discursive strategies reinforce exclusion and normalise control. Our mixed-methods approach combines corpus-based analysis with qualitative narratology, revealing a convergence between political and media discourse in conflating legal categories, using vague terminology, and advancing overlapping exclusionary logics. We show how discursive patterns of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness shape representational and narrative strategies. These findings reveal how language reinforces exclusion and normalises control, indicating the need for conceptual clarity and alternative discourses beyond technocratic or moralistic framings.
Keywords
Introduction
Migration, especially such that is perceived as ‘irregular’, has become an increasingly contentious topic in Germany, shaping political debates, policy making and election outcomes as well as media coverage. The concept of ‘irregularised migrants’ refers to individuals whose migration status does not align with legal residence requirements, thereby rendering them susceptible to exclusion, precarity, and state control. This paper systematically examines how political and media discourse in Germany construct the category of ‘irregular migration’ and those labelled as ‘irregular migrants’, demonstrating how such constructions shape exclusionary logics and policy outcomes. To do so, we pursue a two-fold approach, including both the representation (nominations and attributions of lexical items associated with irregularity) and narrativisation of ‘irregularity’ in the context of migration. Our analysis focuses on three dominant discursive logics—securitisation, economisation, and deservingness—through which irregularised migrants are framed and evaluated in the domains of politics and media.
The representation of migrants in media and politics, especially their linguistic nominations and attributions (Calabrese, 2018; Mistiaen, 2024), have received considerable attention from discourse analysts internationally. Such studies have shown that specific denominations and designations have the potential to humanise or dehumanise—even demonise—people on the move. Corpus-based methodology has proven valuable and reliable in mapping and understanding such large-scale patterns (Mistiaen, 2024). Nomination patterns also seem to interrelate with patterns of activation and passivation of migrants, for instance as perpetrators or victims. However, the link to narrative has not been pursued conclusively in this context and also presents significant methodological challenges (REF anonymised). Building on this foundation, our study contributes to the field by not only mapping lexical and narrative patterns but by showing how they cluster around the interlocking discursive regimes of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness.
Utilising corpus-based discourse analysis, this study systematically examines large-scale textual data from the social fields of action media and politics through a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. First, two corpora were compiled by using key search terms related to irregularised migration, migrant labour and living conditions to identify relevant texts—following the research focus of the larger [funded research project—reference removed]. Second, to map the discursive representation of irregularity, statistical analysis used CL methods for frequency, collocation and keyness analysis; third, for more in-depth analysis, we inductively developed semantic groups at the level of frequency, collocation and keyness. Fourth, in order to map the narrative aspect of the discursive construction of irregularity, we used the results of collocation analysis and concordancing to identify prevalent narrative patterns which, abstracted from specific instances, we term ‘proto-narratives’. This approach is informed by narratological theory, which facilitates the identification of discursive structures such as character roles, plot trajectories, and moral evaluations embedded in public discourse (de Fina, 2003; de Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012). Like ‘topoi’ in argumentation theory, proto-narratives are analytic abstractions, structural patterns with wide spread in the corpus; like topoi, we find concrete instances and variations of them in empirical data. Fifth, we retrieved a small sample of texts from the corpora that featured instances of the most common proto-narratives for qualitative analysis. Sixth, this sample was analysed using the qualitative methodology of narratology (de Fina, 2003; de Fina and Georgakopoulou, 2012).
The results of this study show a convergence between discourse in media and politics in several respects. Both conflate and blur the lines between terms that, like ‘refugee’, ‘asylum seeker’ or ‘tolerated’, have distinct legal meanings, and use vague, colloquial labels like ‘illegal’ that have no legal basis in Germany. Both media and politics predominantly construct irregular immigration/migrants as economic burdens, security threats, or policy challenges, intertwining facets of discursive ‘securitisation’ and discourses of ‘deservingness’ and ‘humanitarianism’ noted in previous studies with economic/labour market-oriented aspects, that is, economisation (e.g. Georgiou and Zaborowski, 2017). There is, at the same time, a notable absence of discursive constructions of irregular migrants as rights-bearing individuals, or as individuals with families, homes and personal lives. Narratively, this coincides with specific (gendered) patterns of activation (attributing agency, e.g. in the context of causing problems) and passivation (denying agency, e.g. in the context of needing help) of irregular migrants that reinforce/go beyond securitisation and deservingness.
Our data also allow for comparisons between political parties and individual newspapers; due to the nature of the politics corpus, however, this comparison is limited to the qualitative analyses for politics, while a full quantitative comparison was also possible for media. The most striking results here indicate that the centrist parties in Germany construct migration within frames of securitisation, deservingness and economisation that do not simply irregularise but also largely dehumanise those who are outside state control; whereas the far-right outright demonises ‘irregular migrants’ and embeds ‘irregular migration’ in a web of conspiracy narratives. 1 The complex interplay of these discursive and narrative patterns, we conclude, significantly shapes policy debates and public sentiment, often reinforcing exclusionary logics while ignoring/neglecting spaces for alternative representations and narratives.
Public discourse about (irregular) migration and migrants in Germany
This section examines the existing literature on discourse surrounding irregularised migration in Germany across the key domains of media and politics. While there is a considerable body of research on migration discourse in general, empirical studies focusing specifically on the discourse about ‘irregular migration’ remain scarce. However, relevant insights can be drawn from adjacent research on political and media discourses as well as broader migration debates.
Since 2015, German media discourse on immigration has undergone significant transformations, influenced by public sentiment, political shifts, and key events. Initially, media coverage was dominated by a ‘welcome culture’ that emphasised humanitarian responsibility and solidarity with refugees (Gebauer, 2023). However, following the widely publicised New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne in 2015, media narratives shifted toward concerns over security, integration challenges, and cultural differences (Lange and Schmidt-Catran, 2023).
Research on media framing indicates that German media outlets varied in their portrayal of the refugee situation. Some continued to frame refugees in humanitarian terms, while others adopted more critical perspectives that emphasised threats and societal impacts. Heidenreich et al. (2019) applied a comparative topic modelling approach to analyse these shifts in media framing during the European refugee crisis. Similarly, Amores et al. (2019) examined visual frames of migrants and refugees in Western European media, highlighting significant differences in portrayal across national contexts.
Specific events have also played a crucial role in shaping media narratives. The 2020 fire at the Moria refugee camp reignited debates about Germany’s asylum policies, with media discourse oscillating between humanitarian concerns and fears of an impending refugee influx. Likewise, the 2016 Berlin Christmas market attack intensified discussions on national security and the vetting of asylum seekers. These episodic shifts underscore the media’s dual role in both reflecting and shaping public discourse on ‘irregular migration’.
The evolution of media coverage has also had implications for public trust. Initially, the overwhelmingly positive portrayal of refugees led to accusations of bias, contributing to a segment of the population feeling that their concerns were unrepresented. This, in turn, fuelled scepticism towards mainstream media and the rise of alternative news sources. In summary, German media discourse on ‘irregular migration’ has transitioned from an initial humanitarian focus to a more complex and contested narrative landscape that reflects broader political and societal tensions.
Political discourse on ‘irregular migration’ in Germany has also experienced a significant transformation since the 2015 refugee crisis. Initially, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s stance—exemplified by the phrase ‘Wir schaffen das’ (‘We can do this’)—set a welcoming tone. However, by 2016–2017, political discourse had pivoted toward security concerns, deportations, and asylum restrictions (Trittler, 2022). This shift was partly driven by electoral considerations, as migration became a major wedge issue in the 2017 federal election. Dostal (2017) noted that mainstream parties, including the CDU and SPD, adopted increasingly restrictive positions to counter the rising influence of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
The role of far-right discourse in shaping migration debates has been extensively documented. Gessler and Hunger (2021) demonstrated that AfD rhetoric significantly influenced both immigrant communities and native Germans, increasing societal polarisation. Similarly, Uranga (2021) found that the securitisation of migration discourse—framing refugees as potential criminals or terrorists—was instrumental in the AfD’s electoral success in 2017 and 2021. Jäckle and König (2018) further established a link between violent events, such as terrorist attacks in Europe, and subsequent surges in anti-refugee violence, highlighting how political and media discourse reinforced security-based framings of migration.
Beyond party politics, Bundestag debates have become increasingly polarised since 2015. Schrader (2021) found that deliberative discourse has declined, with AfD MPs frequently employing populist rhetoric, while other parties became more defensive in their migration policy positions. Intra-party debates have also intensified; additionally, divisions within the CDU/CSU reveal tensions between moderates who advocated for integration and hardliners who pushed for stricter migration policies (Frymark and Kwiatkowska, 2018).
Longitudinal studies of political language further underscore these trends. Kostikova et al. (2022) conducted a Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis of 155 years of Bundestag discourse, finding that since 2015, support for migrants in parliamentary speeches has declined, particularly among conservative parties. Similarly, Schünemann (2020) demonstrated that diversity discourse remains contested across political parties, with some framing diversity as an asset and others as a threat to social cohesion.
Political discourse has had tangible impacts on migration legislation in Germany. Mavroudi and Nagel (2023) argue that migration has historically been framed as a crisis during key nation-building moments, including Cold War-era asylum debates and the 2015 refugee influx. This framing has reinforced restrictive policies that align with older protectionist narratives. Trittler (2022) identified key legislative shifts following the 2015 crisis, including (a) the Asylum Package I & II of 2016, which introduced faster deportations and reduced refugee benefits; (b) the Integration Act of 2016, which provided labour market access but imposed stricter integration obligations, and (c) Migration Pact of 2019, which established greater control over asylum claims and introduced a merit-based immigration system. These policies reflect a broader trend towards administrative restriction and securitisation in German asylum discourse. The interplay between media and political narratives continues to shape legislative outcomes, influencing both public perception and policy formulation.
In summary, the recent literature on migration discourse in Germany reveals distinct yet interconnected narratives across media and politics. Media and political discourse have increasingly framed migrants in general, implicitly including irregular migrants, as security risks, economic burdens, or policy challenges. These competing framings play a crucial role in shaping public attitudes, electoral outcomes, and legislative measures. This study builds upon existing research by providing an empirical analysis of how irregularity is constructed in German public discourse, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of migration debates in contemporary Germany.
While substantial research has examined the representation of refugees and migrants in German media and politics, the specific discursive construction of ‘irregular migration’ and ‘irregular migrants’ remains strikingly underexplored. Existing studies rarely focus on how irregularity itself is constituted, reproduced, or contested in discourse—despite its central role in shaping exclusionary policies and public sentiment. Moreover, few contributions integrate quantitative corpus-linguistic methods with qualitative narrative analysis to trace both the lexical representation and the narrativisation of irregularity. This study fills that gap by offering a comprehensive, mixed-methods analysis that captures how securitisation, economisation, and deservingness emerge as key discursive logics in both media and political discourse. In doing so, it advances the field by providing an empirically grounded framework for understanding how discourse contributes to the irregularisation of migration in contemporary Germany.
Legal analyses such as the REMAP study (Bast et al., 2022) have drawn attention to the human rights challenges inherent in European migration policy, including in Germany. Their findings underscore how irregularised migrants often fall into legal grey zones that limit access to social rights and protections. This legal precarity closely intersects with the discursive marginalisation examined in this paper, reinforcing how institutional frameworks and public discourse together construct and constrain migrant agency.
Research design and methodology
Conceptualisation
We conceptualise irregularity as produced at the nexus of nested legal systems, political and public discourses on irregularity. This paper focuses on the discursive dimension of the irregularity assemblage and, in the survey part, the perception of discourse. We refer to the ‘discursive construction’ and to the ‘discursive representation’ of social realities, such as irregularised migrants, migration and irregularity as such.
The following aspects of the irregularity assemblage are crucial: Discursive constructions of irregularity and associated entities, actions and people, in particular through linguistic interactions manifest as ‘texts’, both reflect and constitute a significant part of the social reality of irregularity. We regard discourse as a polyphonous, multi-voiced field of social interaction and thus also of the contestation of social meanings. Discourse, in other words, has ontological power (REF anonymised).
In short, even if there is a dominant or hegemonic meaning or narrative of irregularity, there will be alternative or counter-hegemonic voices, positions and narratives. Our large textual dataset enables us to capture the contributions of a wide range of heterogeneous actors to the discourse on irregularity. By including media and politics, a comparative perspective is facilitated. Regarding intersectionality, we aim to explore the textual with respect to interdiscursive links between gender, race, and class. However, interdiscursivity may also reveal very specific combinations characterising a specific country’s irregularity assemblage, for example, regarding the link between migration and labour markets or between migration and national identity.
We define ‘narrative’ as a textual sequence of meaningful events that orders reality in a comprehensible way. They inevitably leave out certain elements (e.g. plots and figures) in their telling and focus on particular other elements by which they evaluate or judge aspects of reality. This ‘ordering’ or ‘transformation’ we refer to as ‘emplotment’ (Ricoeur, 1984; White, 1973). This kind of emplotment has been studied as a way of encoding ideology or Weltanschauung into even the simplest story. Key elements of narrative in this view, as in many others, are characters (often but not exclusively ‘hero’, ‘villain’, ‘helper’ and ‘bystander’), setting or circumstance (including places, time periods), plot (the sequence of actions or events), means (tools, devices that help or hinder characters) and moral (evaluation or judgment). This basic pattern is not always fully set out and may also be ambiguous and therefore open to differing perceptions and varying interpretations (Martin and Rose, 2008; Salmaso, 2014).
Data set
The total dataset consists of 6007 texts, or more than 67 million tokens, and spans a 5-year period (2019–2023). Search terms were used to identify relevant texts in respective data bases and archives for media and politics, that is, irregularity, irregular, irregular migrant*, illegal migrant*, residency-law illegality, residency, overstay, irregular labour, deportation, tolerated, undocumented, sans papier.
The media corpus thus compiled for this study comprises 5418 texts from major German newspapers, covering a 5-year period (1 January 2019–31 December 2023). The sample includes publications of varying political leanings and quality, such as the conservative-right tabloid Bild, the conservative-liberal Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the progressive-liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung, among others, in order to represent the German media landscape.
To reflect public political discourse in Germany, the politics corpus was compiled from the federal level of Germany’s political sphere. This included parliamentary debates, party manifestos and coalition papers, political speeches and press releases of the Federal Government and MPs of all parties represented in the Bundestag, as well as reports and statements presented to or by parliamentary committees/working groups. A sample of 589 texts from a 5-year period (1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023) were included, yielding a total 26,710,079 tokens. The text corpus was not used to quantitatively compare parties or institutions (Table 1).
Data sample.
Analytical procedure
The initial quantitative analysis, using statistical methods developed in Corpus Linguistics, allows us to understand the lexical patterns of large sets of linguistic data, thus approximating discourses more comprehensively than in-depth small-scale qualitative analysis. The lexical patterns we aim to identify concern the people, entities and processes involved in the irregularity assemblage in specific country contexts. The initial statistical analysis was done in AntConc (frequency, collocations, keyness), and then extended in Excel, specifically for semantic groups (Baker and McEnery, 2005; McEnery and Gabrielatos, 2006; Orpin, 2005).
The quantitative analysis focuses on lexical frequency, the prevalence of semantic groups, and collocations; these findings were then used to identify recurring narrative structures—that is, characters, plot, settings, means and evaluations—revolving around key concepts such as migration, migrant, refugee, labour, irregularity and family. To be precise, based on the statistical results of the corpus analysis, we used the construct of ‘proto-narratives’ to down-sampled to a smaller sample of texts to analyse qualitatively for narratives. These proto-narratives were constructed around base words, that is, salient terms in the respective data sets that relate to [anonymised research project] research focus, such as ‘migrant’, ‘migration’ and ‘labour’. Proto-narratives are thus analytical abstractions, inductively built by the researcher from CL results, to fill the typical elements of narrative: (1) characters, (2) actions, (3) settings or circumstances, (4) means, tools and objects engaged with, (5) a moral or evaluation (Wodak and Rheindorf, 2017).
For example, a strong collocation (high likelihood value) between ‘migrants’ and the verbs ‘live’, ‘resist’ and ‘deported’ suggests three proto-narratives around migrants living, resisting and (being) deported; collocations with the words ‘border’, ‘underground’ and ‘cities’ suggest that these might be the main settings/circumstances etc. Significantly, narratives can centre not only on human beings (migrant) but also on abstract concepts (migration) or organisations (the government), using rhetorical devices such as pars-pro-totem or metonymy (as in ‘Berlin has decided’ or ‘Migration has changed the face of Germany forever’).
Constructing proto-narratives is thus a reiterative process that involves deciding on specific base words (based on research interest) such as ‘migrant’ and ‘migration’, parsing the results of collocational analysis, and exploring potential narrative links through concordances to determine whether such links are, indeed, narrative rather than, for example, descriptive. Once constructed, we used these abstract proto-narratives to select texts containing instances and variations for closer qualitative analysis.
On both the quantitative and the qualitative level, we compare and contrast the discursive construction of irregularity in the media and politics to identify the specificity of discourses and narratives in each domain (Baker et al., 2008), particularly how these narratives reinforce or challenge dominant discursive frames of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness. By integrating corpus linguistics with narratological analysis, this study contributes a novel framework for effectively triangulating research into how representational and narrative elements shape the discursive production of irregularity (REF anonymised).
The discursive construction of irregularity in German media
Quantitative analysis
The 10 most frequent individual lemma related to irregularised migrants, their working and living conditions, in the media corpus are, in their English translation: migrant, arrival, irregular, Germany, work, illegal, border, Europe(an), politics and legal. While the high frequency of migrant and irregular is unsurprising, given the topical focus of our text selection, the prominence of arrival and border suggests a strong association of irregularised migrants and arrival, specifically in the form of border crossing and border control, rather than their stay or residency, in German media discourse. Similarly, while Germany might be expected to feature very frequently, the fact that Europe appears nearly as frequently suggests that ‘irregular migration’ is seen as a European issue—notably, of all the references to Europe, roughly half are to the European Union and its institutions. While labour or work, both as noun and verb, are lexically salient, terms related to the family and household dimension (e.g. family, home) are less frequently used.
In contrast, precise and legally correct terminology, such as person in residence-law illegality (Menschen in aufenthaltsrechtlicher Illegalität), is relatively absent from media discourse, with no occurrence in the tabloid data at all. Similarly, governmental institutions and authorities involved in the production of irregularity and regularity, including asylum, general welfare, education and healthcare, are largely absent from German media discourse on irregularity. Among these, vague references to the government itself and to the police are the most frequent.
As the lexical frequency of individual words does not always reliably indicate which topics are most dominant across a large number of texts, we also analysed large groups of semantically connected words, so-called macro-topics, to comprehensively map the semantic preoccupations in the data.
Across the media, 12 macro-topics, each comprising up to several hundred of individual words, dominate in the following order:
work and labour;
migration;
politics and governance, comprising subcategories the government, policy, international institutions, and law and order;
status of migrants;
rights and obligations of migrants;
crime;
welfare;
costs and burdens;
subject, comprising subcategories family and household, subjective experience and identities;
numbers, uncountables and statistics;
places and geography; and
crisis.
These macro-topics represent aggregates of the most common topics, each containing high and low frequency words, and comprise the vast majority of content words in the corpus. They do not, however, include every topic (e.g. the weather) or every single word (e.g. articles or conjunctions). When summed up, the frequencies of all terms in each separate group give a comprehensive overview of the German media’s preoccupations in relation to irregularised migration. They also allow for a comparison between the relative weight given these topics as well as to specific terms (Figure 1).
Salience of macro-topics (media corpus).
These macro-topics, though not grouped a priori by thematic logic, show strong overlap with the discursive logics of securitisation (topics like crime, border, and security), economisation (topics such as labour, costs, and welfare), and deservingness (topics involving rights, status, and family references).
Collocation analysis reveals that the semantic field around migration is narrowly focused on limiting, reducing and stopping ‘irregular migration’, which is used interchangeably with illegal migration. The term migrant is most frequently associated with crossing, detained, and deportation, reinforcing the perception of migration as an issue of border control and law enforcement. In contrast, words related to integration, such as employment, education, or community, appear with significantly lower frequency. In contrast to the abstract notion of migration, references to migrants are most strongly with illegality quantifiers like influx, more and many, arrival, crossing borders, crossing the Mediterranean and English Channel by boat, and authorities of migration control. Finally, labour is by default associated with questions of legality, the exploitation of migrants, dangers and risks of (illegal, exploitative) labour, and focused on specific sectors.
Qualitative analysis
Several dominant narratives emerge from the media corpus, reflecting broader ideological and political concerns. The first major narrative presents irregular migrants as economic contributors or exploited workers, particularly in sectors such as agriculture, domestic work, and delivery services. Progressive outlets occasionally highlight exploitation and the precarious conditions faced by undocumented workers, but conservative-leaning publications tend to emphasise competition for jobs and the perceived strain on social services.
A second dominant narrative constructs irregular migrants as a border problem rather than as individuals with lived experiences. The focus on waves of arrivals and border crises reinforces the notion of ‘irregular migration’ as an external threat requiring stringent control measures. Right-wing tabloids such as Bild amplify this narrative, often invoking metaphors of invasion.
A third significant narrative frames young male migrants as a security threat. Headlines frequently link irregularised migration to crime, portraying young men—particularly those from Muslim-majority countries—as prone to violence or as potential radical elements. This portrayal is reinforced by the statistical finding that crime appears in 42% of articles about young male migrants compared to just 9% of articles about female migrants.
A final, albeit less frequent, humanitarian narrative is found primarily in broadsheet newspapers such as Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit. These outlets frame asylum seekers, particularly Ukrainians, as legitimate refugees deserving of protection, while migrants from Africa or the Middle East are more frequently classified as illegal or economic migrants.
In general, German media:
- tend to produce narratives with morals or evaluations rather than without;
- use prominent gender markers only in narratives of crime or problematic behaviour (‘young men become criminal/create problems’) and in narratives of suffering (‘women from Ukrainian have lost everything’);
- use personalised narratives (by using first names, including personal, relatable qualities) about irregularised migrants in connection with morals and evaluations;
- tabloid/quality media use personalised narratives differently, that is, link to different types of morals and evaluations: individualised emotional appeals in the case of tabloids, geopolitical evaluations and political/policy consequences in the case of quality media;
- tend to link narratives about irregular migrants to other narratives, often about German ‘heroes’ or ‘helpers’ in the case of tabloids, and to German politics or Germany’s role in European/international politics in the case of quality media.
The discursive construction of irregularity in German politics
Data sample
Data was compiled to reflect public political discourse about ‘irregular’ migration and migrants in terms of Germany’s institutions of representative democracy, policy-making and party politics at the federal level. This included parliamentary debates, party manifestos and coalition papers, political speeches and press releases of the Federal Government and MPs of all parties represented in the Bundestag, as well as reports and statements presented to or by parliamentary committees/working groups.
Quantitative analysis
The most frequent individual lemma related to irregularised migrants, their working and living conditions, in the politics corpus include: migrant, work, labour market, economy, numbers, Germany, costs, budget, rights, human rights, policy, Europe, European, obligations, law, measures, legal, illegal, border, irregular, protect, security and crime. Significantly, we can also observe that political discourse does not generally conflate migrants with asylum seekers, asylum applicants or refugees. However, the term person in residence-law illegality is virtually absent from political discourse. Similarly, terms related to the family and household dimension of irregularised migrants (family, home) are infrequent and appear mostly in the context of human rights and welfare.
While the high frequency of migrants and numbers is unsurprising, given the topical focus of our text selection, the other highly frequent items on the above list warrant a closer look. German political discourse is strongly focused not just on work but the labour market (and labour market access) and the economy in relation to irregularised migrants, as well as on the costs of ‘irregular migration’ and its impact on the budget. Rights—often but not always specifically human rights—are also often discussed, often in relation to purported duties or obligations of migrants. Rather than politics in general, specific policies, laws and measures are frequently mentioned, many of which relate to labour, bordering and crime in terms of protecting or maintaining security. The specific governmental institutions and authorities that carry out in such policies, including asylum, general welfare, education and healthcare, are relatively absent from political discourse.
Notably, nearly a third of the lexical material included here refers to the
Interestingly, the
Salience of macro-topics (politics corpus).
While exploitation of migrant labour is frequently discussed, the people who are affected by exploitation are virtually absent from this topic, which is typically discussed in abstract and/or statistical terms. In the context irregularity, the terms denoting work, working and workers collocate strongly with words relating to migration (e.g. migrant workers), qualification (skilled labour, skilled workers), legality and illegality, rights, exploitation and dangers (human trafficking, forced labour, forced prostitution) as well as specific sectors (care, meat, agriculture). The experience of people affected by such working conditions, for example, their motivations, needs and experiences, is absent from the discourse.
The word migration itself is associated most strongly with refugees, irregularity, federal authority, integration, flight, illegality, BAMF, asylum, regularity, steer, limiting, European, stemming, border management, directing, stopping and reducing.
In contrast to the abstract concept of migration, references to migrants are most strongly with refugees, illegality, irregularity, people smuggling, numbers, Libya, taking in, asylum seekers, instrumentalisation, Europe, labour, Belarus, integration, the English Channel, borders, holding facilities, deportation, Greece and camps. It is significant that labour figures more prominently here than with the noun migration, indicating the migration as a whole is more often seen as separate from labour than migrants themselves.
Qualitative analysis
The following key narratives emerge from the political corpus. The first constructs irregular migrants as skilled versus low-skilled economic actors. Policymakers across the political spectrum acknowledge the need for skilled migrant labour but often differentiate between desirable high-skilled workers and undesirable low-skilled migrants. This distinction is particularly pronounced in conservative and right-wing rhetoric. The second narrative presents migrants as a burden on public resources, reinforcing the argument for stricter border enforcement and deportation policies. The third frequently employed narrative revolves around fairness and queue-jumping, wherein irregular migrants are depicted as circumventing the legal immigration process, disadvantaging ‘law-abiding’ applicants. Finally, migration is frequently linked to crime and radicalisation, often in the context of legislative debates on national security and border enforcement.
Generally speaking, German politics:
strongly tend to use impersonal, abstract rather than personalised narratives (by using first names, including personal, relatable qualities);
strongly tend to link narratives about irregular migrants and migrations to other narratives, often more than one (up to as many as five in our small sample);
tend to combine gender with religious markers (‘young Muslim men’);
produce narratives with morals or evaluations approximately as frequently as without them; and
use prominent gender markers only in narratives of crime or problematic behaviour (‘young men become criminal/create problems’) and in narratives of suffering (‘women from Ukrainian have lost everything’).
Beyond securitisation and deservingness: Ideological shifts and discursive normalisation in policy and media
This study highlights the divergent ways in which irregularised migrants are discursively constructed in German media and politics. By systematically analysing lexical frequency, semantic group weight, and collocations, as well as identifying dominant narratives, we reveal how each domain frames ‘irregular migration’ in distinct ways, shaping public perception and policy discussions.
The media primarily portray irregular migrants through narratives of border control, security threats, and economic burden, reinforcing an exclusionary logic. Collocations with terms such as illegal, influx, border, crossing, and detained suggest that migration is often framed as a challenge to national security and public order rather than as an issue of human rights or integration. While some progressive outlets highlight exploitation and precarious labour conditions, such representations remain secondary to dominant narratives of crisis, control, and enforcement.
In political discourse, ‘irregular migration’ is constructed primarily in terms of governance, legality, and economic impact. The most frequent terms—labour market, costs, policy, border control, and security—reflect a technocratic approach that abstracts migrants into statistical and economic categories. Political narratives emphasise policy measures, obligations, and the burden on public resources, often linking migration to crime and radicalisation. The personal experiences of migrants are largely absent, replaced by discussions of legality and control mechanisms. The findings demonstrate that these competing narratives contribute to distinct and often conflicting perceptions of ‘irregular migration’. Both media and political discourses reinforce exclusionary policies through an interlocking triad of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness—each of which frames irregularised migrants as threats, burdens, or morally illegitimate subjects.
These patterns not only reflect dominant discursive logics but also resonate with long-standing tendencies in German and EU policymaking and public discourse: the progressive securitisation of migration and its more recent reconfiguration in terms of deservingness and economisation within political and media discourses.
While securitisation has been a dominant lens in the construction of ‘irregular migration’ in political discourse, our findings also support the view that the framing of ‘irregular migration’ as a security issue has become institutionalised in German policymaking much earlier than is often acknowledged. As Bosch and Wiest (2007) as well as Vollmer (2014) have argued, securitisation has not only shifted international migration into the policy field of security but has normalised it within broader EU migration control regimes. The discursive strategies we identified—emphasizing policy instruments, budgetary concerns, and legal compliance—exemplify this normalisation of securitised policymaking.
This normalisation is not merely procedural but ideological. Migration policy in Germany and the EU has long been driven by heuristic decision-making frameworks, where emotional and ideological factors often override evidence-based reasoning (Vollmer, 2014). Such tendencies contribute to a stagnation of policy innovation, producing what others have termed a ‘governance deficit’ (Betts, 2011; Castles, 2014; Gamlen and Marsh, 2011). The empirical traces of this discourse suggest a deep entrenchment of securitisation that inhibits alternative narratives—such as rights-based or structural understandings of ‘irregular migration’—from influencing policymaking.
The REMAP study (Bast et al., 2022) illustrates how this discursive normalisation of control is mirrored at the legal level, where policy increasingly departs from rights-based protections. Rather than upholding unconditional access to fundamental rights, policies increasingly restrict migrants’ access to healthcare, housing, and social security based on legal status. These legal constraints parallel—and are arguably legitimised by—the discursive logics of securitisation and economisation that dominate German public discourse, as our findings show.
Moreover, the category shift from ‘irregular migrant’ to ‘economic migrant,’ observed in the political discourse around 2015–2016, illustrates a strategic re-labelling that broadens the discursive boundaries of exclusion. As Vollmer (2016) notes, this new label is more ambiguous and more expansive, intensifying the potential for demonisation and populist appropriation by far-right actors across the EU. In media discourse, too, the shift from deservingness to suspicion has marked a critical turning point. As Vollmer and Karakayali (2018) observe, representations of refugees as innocent and deserving gave way to renewed hostility, driven in part by mediatised moral binaries and a digital amplification of populist frames. This convergence echoes what Bettini (2017) describes in the context of climate-related mobility as a shared biopolitical framing, where humanitarian and security logics operate within the same discursive terrain to produce governable subjects and exclude the unruly.
In conclusion, the representation of irregularised migrants in Germany is not neutral—it is actively shaped by the strategic priorities and ideological orientations of different societal actors. Political and media discourse overwhelmingly prioritise security, legality, and economic cost, framing irregular migrants primarily as threats, burdens, or problems to be managed. This security-economic lens is particularly stark in tabloid media and far-right political narratives, which tend to criminalise and dehumanise irregularised individuals more aggressively than centrist or quality press discourse. Gendered and racialised framings further entrench these dynamics, with male migrants portrayed as dangerous and women as passive victims. These findings reveal not just discursive trends, but the structural underpinnings of a discursive regime that marginalises, disciplines, and silences irregularised migrants.
As Bettini (2017) observes in the context of climate migration, treating mobility as a technical or policy ‘problem’ depoliticises deeply ideological struggles and legitimises exclusionary state practices. The same holds for German discourses on irregularity, where securitisation, economisation and exclusionary logics of deservingness dominate at the expense of rights, agency, and lived experience. As the REMAP study (Bast et al., 2022) makes clear, these exclusionary narratives are not only discursive but enshrined in legal and administrative systems that regulate access to rights based on migration status. Bridging discourse analysis and legal critique thus reveals the full scope of irregularisation as both a discursive and institutional process. Responding to this requires not only tracking discursive trends, but challenging the underlying legal and normative frameworks they sustain.
This study shows that language does not merely reflect social and political realities—it co-constructs them. By identifying the interlocking logics of securitisation, economisation, and deservingness, our findings offer a critical lens to expose and contest the discursive architecture of exclusion. Future research must not only track how these logics evolve in the face of shifting political contexts and evolving media landscapes, but also contribute to imagining and articulating alternative, emancipatory narratives of migration and belonging.
Footnotes
Ethical considerations
No ethical approval was required for this research.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The research reported in this paper was conducted as part of the I-CLAIM project, funded by the European Union and UK Research and Innovation. This research received funding under EU horizon grant number 101094373. More information on I-CLAIM can be found at 
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Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Data availability statement
The primary data collected and analysed for this research cannot be uploaded and shared for legal reasons, but is largely accessible to the public from its original sources. This applies specifically to political discourse in Germany.