Dynamic Values Negotiating Geo-Political Narratives Across a Migration System

Abstract

In this contemporary world, hyperconnected by migrations and digital media, discourse studies can add important insights about diverse interacting voices. Given increasing contact among individuals, groups, and institutions, understanding discursive interactions across geo-political migration systems requires methodological innovation. This article presents a theory-based research design and analysis of how diverse participants in the process of migration use discourse genres to make sense of displacement and interventions. We illustrate this dynamic narrative inquiry with an activity-meaning system design sampling discourses by diverse participants along the Balkan migration route and an analysis of values salient to them. Animating this method is a study in an education intervention in Serbia, where hundreds of young refugees, arriving from violent displacements in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria attended public schools alongside local peers. This methodology integrates principles of critical discourse analysis to study how displaced youth, their peers, educators, national/international policymakers, and public media used relevant genres to make sense of social inclusion. Analyses of participants' narratives, letters, policies, education guidelines, and news reports yielded 17 values and their dynamic interactions. A discourse-based values analyses revealed echoes across student and institutional expressions (the importance of subjectivity and cultural practices) and diverse group values: migrant students' uses of narratives to emphasize geo-political injustices, Serbian students' emphasis on local cultural practices, and institutional emphases on social inclusion. The study demonstrates the ecological validity of an inquiry sensitive to webs of meaning among diverse actors, adding complexity to social inclusion.