Political action and inaction. Identity co-construction in the face of modern crises

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to examine how the topic of migration is viewed under the political lenses of the European Parliament, and how the identity of both the in-group (characterized by the European Community) and the out-groups (represented by Ukrainian and Syrian refugees) are negotiated in parliamentary discourse. The corpus comprises 20 follow-up interventions dealing with the refugee crisis (from 2015 to 2023). To address these aspects, the paper is based on a multidisciplinary approach rooted in fields such as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and pragma-rhetoric. Looking at how collective identities are projected through pronominal references provides a better understanding of the plurality of voices that shape the process of identity formation. Based on the findings, the last part of the research will draw a comparison between how the identities of the in-group and out-group are discursively constructed and co-constructed and will draw attention to the subsequent strategic effects of group categorizing.