Auf Flüchtlingswellen surft man nicht vor Lampedusa

Zur Metaphorik des öffentlichen Diskurses zur Flüchtlingskrise Italiens

Abstract

Lampedusa's refugees don't make any waves – this is the conclusion we could draw from our analysis of metaphors in the Italian press discourse about the refugee crisis in 2015. Our discourse analytical approach focuses on the use of metaphors in print media after a migrant vessel incident in April 2015 near Lampedusa. These findings can be seen as an indicator of the dynamics and the shifting in the refugee discourse. They mark a rupture and question other studies in which the refugee crises are described as some metaphorical natural disaster. The analysis shows the shifting of the metaphorical functions in the corpus analyzed in view of emotion and self-criticism in European immigration policy.