Eastern Europeans in British Newspapers from 2004 to 2007 abstract

Deminoritization: Strategic Essentialism and the politics of Difference. Eds. Mounir Triki, Chokri Smaoui and Sami Nighaoui. Kairouan: Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, 2017

My paper is focused on the way British newspapers covered Eastern European immigration into Britain from 2004 to 2007, a lapse of time involving the two waves of the fifth EU enlargement. This enlargement resulted in a large influx of Eastern Europeans, considered by John Salt, a geographer at University College London, and Ian Fitzgerald, from Northumbria University, as the biggest influx in British history which surprised everybody, contributing to the re-emergence of the immigration issue and its impact on British society. Articles covering the influx of Eastern Europeans and the related issues, published in three daily newspapers: the Telegraph, Daily Mail and the Mirror, are qualitatively analyzed, using framing, a recognized tool in media studies. The intention is to study the link between media frames and public opinion in relation to the influx and its impact on people’s attitudes about white European immigrants from Eastern Europe. This is carried out by comparing media representations to opinion polls dealing with the most important issues facing the country. I shall argue that daily newspapers’ representations affected Britons’ attitudes about the influx, thus creating a new ‘other’ in multicultural Britain.

This paper looks at how the British press frames the issue of Romanian immigrants in Great Britain, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in the UK. The study insists on the frames employed by the British journalists in constructing anti-immigration discourses in the newspapers. In doing so, it focuses on the stereotypes about Romanian people employed in quality and tabloid newspapers (" beggars " , " murderers " , " criminals " , " fraudsters " , " corrupt ") and on how they affect Romania's image overseas. By using a mixed research approach, i.e. by combining framing analysis (Entman, 1993) with the critical discourse analysis, this article investigates 271 news items out of three of the most read newspapers in UK (The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Independent), which were published online during January 2013–March 2014. As a conclusion, the results show that the British press uses frames such as economic, political, and also pertaining to employment and national security in the coverage of Romanian immigration. The media also infer the polarization between " Us " (the British citizens) and " Them " (the Romanian migrants).

Training Language and Culture, 2018

This study examines the way in which European Union (EU) immigration was portrayed in the British press during the week immediately prior to the EU referendum of 23rd June, 2016. The research method is based on a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, with the aim of providing both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the issue. It begins by establishing the rationale behind the proposed topic, before outlining the theoretical and methodological framework of this corpus-based approach to investigating news discourse, which includes the analysis of frequency, concordances and collocates as they occur in three national-wide, online newspapers, namely the Daily Mail, the Guardian and the BBC. Further findings in relation to DA are then discussed, followed by concluding remarks and observations concerning the limitations of this approach and the tool utilised within it.

Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 2020

This paper will analyze the role of the Romanian press in the debate about the migration of the Romanian people, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in Great Britain. The theme of Romanian migrants in the UK is a public issue which involves, among others, the country image of Romania. Considering these facts, the discussion will focus on the national symbols used by Romanian mass-media, as a response to the campaigns from the British tabloid press, and on the way in which stereotypes of Romanian people, spread in quality and tabloid newspapers (" beggars " , " murderers " , " criminals " , " fraudsters " , " corrupt ") shape the discursive construction of Romania's nation brand. Methodologically, a mixed research will be used, combining critical discourse analysis and media frames analysis, implying the four structural frame devices developed by Pan & Kosicki (1993). As a conclusion, the Romanian journalists respond to the anti-immigration campaigns from the British press by using three media frames: the anti-immigration frame, the contestation frame – Daily Fail and the truth frame. In doing so, the journalists fight against the stereotypes most employed in the British news articles about the Romanian migrants.

Changing Neighbourhoods: Inter-group Relations and Migrant Integration in European Cities, 2016

This paper looks at how the media – particularly the British press and television – frames the issue of Romanian immigrants in Great Britain, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in the Euro-pean Union. The study focuses on the frames employed by the British journalists in constructing anti-immigration discourses in the digital and the TV sphere, comparatively. This study analyzes the stereotypes about Romanian people used in two British media formats and the way in which they affect Romania's country image overseas. Using a mixed research approach, combining framing analysis (Entman, 1993) with critical discourse analysis (Van Dijk, 1993), and dispositif analysis (Charaudeau, 2005) this article investigates 271 news items from three of the most read newspapers in the UK (The Guardian, Daily Mail and The Independent), published online during January 2013 – March 2014. Also, the paper analyzes three film documentaries from BBC (Panorama – The Romanians are Coming? – BBC1, The Truth About Immigration – BBC2 and The Great Big Romanian invasion – BBC World News). The analysis shows that the British press and television use both similar and different frames to coverage Romanian migrants. The media also infer the polarization between " Us " (the British media) and " Them " (the Romanian citizens).

Annals of the University of Petrosani: Economics, 2015