Political and Media Discourses of Illegal Immigration in Ireland

While migrants categorised as illegal immigrants are generally voiceless, various representations of these migrants are disseminated into Irish society through the Parliament and newsprint media. This book examines how those two institutions discursively represented illegal immigration in Ireland during the 2000s. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis framework it identifies the key argumentations that frame illegal immigration. In so doing, it reveals that there is a significant level of negative discourses and a noticeable preoccupation with controlling illegal immigration. Those negative discourses function to maintain the nation-state rationale of governance, practices of inequality and exclusion, and legitimised expressions of racism. Dr. Elaine Burroughs currently teaches in Maynooth University and is also a Research Assistant at the University College Dublin, Ireland. Dr. Burroughs’ interests lie in the areas of migration, representation, and discourse analysis.