Making Sense of Narratives: Concepts, Causes, Effects and Uses in Migration Research

“Narratives” on, about, for or against international migration are increasingly cited by a wide range of organisations, including national governments, international organisations and NGOs, as one of the most powerful factors in migration policymaking today. For example, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights claimed that they ‘play a fundamental role in guaranteeing equality and the human rights of migrants’ but that inaccurate and nefarious migration narratives are on the rise, using ‘migrants as scapegoats for deep-rooted societal problems and fears, often for political or financial gain.’ Similar claims are regularly made across a range of organisations working on migration.

Yet, whereas narratives hold a significant place in the imagination of migration policymakers, they—and their causes and effects—are often conceptualised on little more than assumptions, ironically, by forming narratives such as the UN example cited above. To look more deeply into the issue, in a recently published report for the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, I review recent scholarly advances to specify what narratives are, explain variation in their popularity, and outline evidence on their effects in migration research.

This is a part of a blog post by James Dennison (a part-time Professor at the Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute).