KRIS, MEN FÖR VEM? : En jämförande studie av en nyhetsmedias och två politiska partiers konstruktion av flyktingar

In the 1990s, a war in former Yugoslavia forced many people to leave their homes and flee their country, resulting in a refugee crisis in Sweden 1992. Around 100 000 Yugoslav refugees, mainly ethnic Bosnians, sought asylum. Twenty-three years later, a new crisis emerged due to various conflicts in the world. The people who sought asylum in Sweden were mainly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The political responses to these refugee waves differed significantly. In the 1990s, family immigration was partly limited, whereas the 2015 refugee crisis led to drastic measures that shifted Sweden from having the European Union's most generous asylum legislation to approving as few asylum applications as possible. This essay examines how the portrayal of refugees differed between the crisis of 1992 and 2015, focusing on the Swedish newspaper “Dagens Nyheter”, and two political parties, “Socialdemokraterna” and “Moderaterna”. A critical discourse analysis was conducted on articles from “Dagens Nyheter” and protocols from the Swedish parliament. To understand the differences in the construction of refugees by these actors, two theoretical frameworks were used: orientalism and securitization. The findings revealed various ways refugees were portrayed, with a greater emphasis on securitization in 2015, although instances of securitization were also present during the 1992 crisis.