The Numbers Game. the Discursive Construction of Ukrainian Migrants in Hungarian Media

Since 2015, the issue of migration has become one of the most important cornerstones of the populist discourse of the Hungarian right-wing government. Originally framed as a securitization problem, this moral panic initiated from above (Gerő-Sík, 2020) has undergone changes after the breakout of Russia’s war against Ukraine resulting in the arrival of Ukrainian displaced people to neighboring Hungary.

Using critical discourse analysis as a general methodological framework, I analyzed the representation and construction of Ukrainian refugees, in Hungarian media.[1] The corpus consists of a purposive sampling of articles appearing between February 2022 and February 2024 on two of the most visited online news portals, pro-government Origo and non-pro-government 24.hu. Here I shall focus on the use of numbers in the corpus. Numbers are a typical rhetoric tool often used in migration discourse to emphasize the size of the threat. (Van Dijk 1991) Their connotation of factuality, scientific truth, objectivity, etc. renders them especially useful for this purpose. They can signify the size of the threat migration poses but also the size of a claimed humanitarian effort. My analysis shows how the figure of the migrant can be flexibly used for various strategic purposes depending on the context. I argue that it works as a floating signifier (Laclau 2018) open to various interpretations. As such it is useful for constructing alternative realities but remains open for contestation as I shall also show.

References:

Gerő, Márton – Sik, Endre (2020): The Moral Panic Button: construction and consequences In: E. Goździak et.al. (eds.) Europe and the Refugee Response. Routledge. p. 39-58.

Laclau, E. (2018) On Populist Reason. Verso

Van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Racism and the Press. Routledge.

[1] The research is part of the project: "Language, engagement and belonging" of the University of Jyväskylä, supported by the Research Council of Finland.