1The list of denominations surrounding the so-called migration crisis is long: the asylum crisis, the migration crisis, the solidarity crisis, the humanitarian crisis, and so on. In 2015, these terms began to proliferate in the discourse of the various actors involved (the media, politicians, institutions, associations, etc.). According to some studies, for instance, the denomination reception crisis refers mainly to the European situation (Adam and Martiniello, 2013, p. 81); the denomination migratory crisis is deemed more neutral (Calabrese and Mistiaen, 2018); while the migrant/refugee crisis places particular focus on the people involved. Other studies seek to pinpoint the characteristics of the supposed migration crisis (Crawley and Duvell, 2017; De Cleen et al., 2017; Krasteva, 2019), the various ways in which it is framed (Berry et al., 2016; De Cock et al., 2019), and the effects of this framing on public opinion (De Coninck, 2020).
2Indeed, as soon as an event is named, it is also framed. Far from trivial, the act of naming implies taking “a certain position vis-à-vis the object being named that designates both the object named and the namer’s position in relation to this object” (Siblot, 2001, p. 15). Naming an event helps to make it exist (Ricœur, 1983; Calabrese, 2013, p. 10), make it intelligible, and understand it (Veniard, 2013b, p. 24). Moreover, the circulation of denominations and the processes of re-categorisation and de-categorisation (Krieg-Planque, 2012, p. 97) help to define the event (Veniard, 2013b), thus contributing to the construction of social reality (Moirand and Reboul-Touré, 2015, p. 109). As the denomination of an event encounters new co-texts, it is brought up to date. Some of the modifications or updates stabilise, giving rise to an event name that enters the collective memory (Calabrese, 2013).
3In the case of migration, an impressive lexical repertoire of expressions containing the word crisis seems to be used interchangeably by politicians, institutions, and the media. The crisis is a highly context-dependent “incomplete denominational expression”; a denomination that cannot be understood without “spatio-temporal coordinates” to explain what it refers to (Calabrese, 2013, pp. 159-167). Since the word crisis presents “great referential diversity” (Veniard, 2013b, p. 88), its meaning is determined less by the description of its referent than by “the construction of the event through discourse” (Veniard, 2013a, p. 221). “Crisis is socially shaped and much of this shaping is done through texts and discussions” (De Rycker and Mohd Don, 2013, p. 5). The ways in which the word crisis is currently understood therefore have a co-occurring relation to its meaning (Veniard, 2013a, p. 221; 2013b, p. 74) and can be studied using co-occurrents (qualifying adjectives and associated complements; Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008) or semes (meaning programmes updated in discourse; Détrie et al., 2017, pp. 345-347). The aim is to reach a better understanding of how the event’s social meaning is constructed when it concerns a migration phenomenon referred to by the denomination crisis. In her analysis of media and literary discourse, Marie Veniard (2013a, pp. 224-226) has identified four common semes with different meanings: “period of time”, “rupture”, “intensity” and “that we want to see the end of”.
4The various denominations referring to the migratory crisis evolve as time goes by, shifting as they circulate from one discourse to another and are taken up by different actors; or, conversely, as they compete with one another, turning into real places and conflictive representational objects (Krieg-Planque, 2012, p. 41). These tensions are central to the very construction of the phenomenon. They play a key role in the mediatisation of migration, in the sense that Simone Bonnafous understands “mediatisation”, namely “the complex process springing from the interaction between various groups and individuals whereby a particular subject becomes present in the mass media and conflicts arise over its interpretation and the attribution of symbolic values” (Bonnafous, 1999, p. 2). One of the groups involved in this process is the media, of course, whose discourse has already been the subject of much research (Veniard, 2013a; 2013b; Krzyżanowski et al., 2018; Angeli Aguiton et al., 2019). The discourse of other actors, however, remains to be explored.
- 1 Belgian Chamber of Representatives, 2022, “Proposition de résolution relative à la crise de l’accu (...)
5In Belgium, migration governance is complex: It is both “multi-level”, and “multi-actor”. Not only are the responsibilities in migration matters shared among the different levels of power (federal, regional, municipal), but these levels each collaborate with non-governmental actors (humanitarian, associations) to which a series of public services have been delegated (Mescoli et al., 2019, pp. 179-180). In 2011, the position of State Secretary for Asylum and Migration was created, marking the institutionalisation of all competences relating to migration, hitherto shared between two ministries whose policies sometimes diverged (Van Neste-Gottignies and Mistiaen, 2018, pp. 54-55), with the aim of overcoming the blockages of two-pronged management and putting an end to “la crise de l’accueil des demandeurs d’asile”1 (the asylum seekers reception crisis). This institutionalisation seeks to instil a coherent political approach to migration matters while also giving the State Secretary the power to put it into operation (Pleysier, 2011).
6This study examines the use, production, and circulation in discourse of denominations constructed on the basis of the nominal syntagm (NS) the crisis, as well as the various mechanisms that associate this NS with the migratory phenomenon in Belgium, depending on the actors involved, the linguistic community (French/Dutch speaking), or the period (from 2011 to 2020). What denominations associated with crisis are found in the discourse of these actors? Within their discourse, what are the mechanisms that associate the term crisis with the migration phenomenon? What exactly does crisis refer to; what are the social and discursive effects of its uses; and what are the issues underpinning its usage? This study seeks to better understand the impacts of the “putting into words” process, based on analysis of the co-occurrents and semes of the denomination crisis in the discourse of the main actors involved in Belgium’s migration governance.
7After describing the corpus and the methodology used, the results of the discourse analysis are detailed and compared to reveal the evolution of the different ways in which the crisis is framed by the actors in discourse, as well as the issues that concern these actors. The analysis thus sheds light on the discursive mechanisms used by the various actors involved as a means of rationalising their positions in relation to the migration phenomenon.
- 2 The corpus was collected in December 2020.
8The corpus (Table 1) covers a period stretching from 2011 (the year in which the position of State Secretary for Asylum and Migration was created, following the sixth state reform) to just before the COVID-19 “health crisis” began, bringing in a new crisis context2. It is worth mentioning that from 2019 to 2020, the Belgian government was only a “caretaker” government, without a State Secretary for Asylum and Migration.
9Created in May 2002, the Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (Fedasil) is tasked with receiving the people who apply for international protection and ensuring that the various reception structures are of sufficient quality and comply with the law. It is a semi-public body that is legally distinct from the State but that remains under the supervision of the State Secretary.
10The Belgian Red Cross (BRC) and its Dutch-speaking counterpart Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen (RKV) are non-governmental organisations that receive people seeking protection in Belgium in collective centres for the duration of their asylum procedure. With a much broader humanitarian mission than Fedasil’s, they also work to raise awareness and promote harmonious “living together”.
- 3 Coordination et initiatives pour réfugiés et étrangers (Coordination and initiatives for refugees (...)
11Le Ciré3 and Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen (VWV) are two central non-profit associations in French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Belgium. They seek to bring together, within their respective linguistic communities, the bulk of the associations that defend the rights of people on the move. These associations have been institutionalised and they are now partly in charge of some public services; they play a central role in the governance of migration while also acting as a counterbalance to power (Mescoli et al., 2019, p. 180).
12With their different roles and statuses, these actors are all participants in Belgium’s reception system. Analysis of their respective discourses reveals their discursive positioning and the way in which they frame the so-called crisis; and, consequently, how they contribute to configuring the representations of the migration phenomenon at a key moment of its institutionalisation in Belgium.
13The corpus brings together all the policy notes written by the State Secretaries for Asylum and Migration (SSAM), the annual reports of the various actors, and all the pages of their official websites that mention the denomination crisis, over the period 2011 to 2020. The policy notes are drafted in French and Dutch, based on the government’s agreement at the beginning of each legislature and then annually. These policy notes define the vision, actions, and objectives that the State Secretary intends to achieve with his/her administration; they also serve to show the achievements of the previous year. The policy notes and the most recent annual reports are published in open access on the websites of the actors studied. Older annual reports were obtained from their communication services. The rest of the corpus was collected via a search for the keyword crisis on their websites (and using the Wayback Machine4).
Table 1. Description of the corpus
| Level |
Mission |
Actor |
Language |
Contents |
Words |
Total Words |
| Governmental |
Political |
SSAM |
French |
11 policy notesa |
139 698 |
314 676 |
| SSAM |
Dutch |
11 policy notes |
121 990 |
| Fedasil |
French |
40 textsb:
-8 annual reports
-2 annual report presentations
-1 testimonial
-29 news pieces |
52 988 |
| Non-governmental |
Humanitarian |
BRC |
French |
34 textsc:
-6 annual reports on “reception of asylum seekers”
-25 news pieces
-3 website pages |
127 183 |
284 799 |
| RKV |
Dutch |
35 textsd:
-10 annual reports
-25 news pieces |
157 616 |
| Associative and activist |
Ciré |
French |
84 textse:
-28 reports (including 12 annual reports)
-3 news pieces
-7 brochures/awareness raising
-38 press releases
-7 comments on the policy notes
-1 analysis presentation |
584 764 |
740 860 |
| VWV |
Dutch |
38 textsf:
-7 annual reports
-4 report presentations
-18 news pieces
-6 events
-3 website pages |
156 096 |
a. Taken from the official website of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives, https://www.lachambre.be (accessed on June 10, 2020).
b. Taken from the official Fedasil website, https://fedasil.be/fr (accessed on December 22, 2019).
c. Taken from the official website of the Belgian Red Cross, https://www.croix-rouge.be/ (accessed on December 22, 2020).
d. Taken from the official Rode Kruis-Vlaanderen website, https://www.rodekruis.be/ (accessed on December 22, 2020).
e. Taken from the official Ciré website, https://www.cire.be/ (accessed on December 22, 2020).
f. Taken from the official Vluchtelingenwerk website, https://vluchtelingenwerk.be/ (accessed on December 22, 2020). |
- 5 TXM is an open-source software co-developed by the IHRIM laboratory of École Normale Supérieure in (...)
- 6 de crisis in Dutch.
14In order to analyse the use of the crisis denominations within the discourse of Belgium’s migration actors from 2011 to 2020, this study begins by identifying the various denominations of the migration phenomenon —including the NS the crisis— and then moves on to analyse the way which they construct this referent in discourse. The corpus (formatted and tagged) is processed using TXM textometry software5. This contrastive and longitudinal tool (Née, 2017, p. 183) enables comparison of the different sub-corpora of actors according to period (in the present case, the time scale chosen is yearly). The software does not, however, allow a direct comparison of the two languages. Consequently, the sub-corpora were processed independently and then compared manually (Hermand et Thouraud, 2015). The tool has two features which were of particular interest: The co-occurrences calculator and the concordancer. The co-occurrence of a word refers to its force of attraction for another in the same context (Lebart et al., 2019, p. 113). The co-occurrence index “assesses the co-occurrent’s degree of rarity, from a statistical point of view” (Ibidem). It measures the attraction between crisis and its various co-occurrents within each sub-corpus (in a window of 5 words to the left and right of the pivot word). Co-occurrence calculations therefore reveal any recurring lexical associations (Née, 2017, p. 183). The concordancer offers direct access to each occurrence of the crisis (pivot) in context, so that we can qualitatively observe the extensiveness of the co-text. Note that analysis of the crisis co-occurents in Dutch6 must take into account the morphology of the Dutch language, which builds the meaning of words by juxtaposing other words (De Haas and Trommellen, 1993, pp. 10-13). Because of this particular way of constructing meaning, we have to go through the various derivations one by one, and then identify their co-occurrents.
15From a linguistic point of view, an event denomination is a definite nominal expression (Kleiber, 1981) whose basis is the common name of an event (Calabrese, 2013, p. 146). Our analysis of the co-occurrents focuses on the NS the crisis and its various prepositional or adjectival expansions referring to the migration phenomenon. As to the other co-occurrents, they are updates that allow us to pinpoint which of the crisis semes are most used in discourse (Veniard, 2013a). These uses of the crisis by the various actors are then compared over time in order to unveil “the conflicts in interpretation and in the attribution of symbolic values” (Bonnafous, 1999, p. 2) that they foster in building the social meaning of the crisis in discourse.
16The corpus shows imbalances in terms of number of words per actor. Fedasil is the actor with the least content that includes the word crisis, while the associations —particularly Ciré— produce significantly more content mentioning crisis than the other actors studied (see Table 1). This is essentially a source bias: Due to the redesign of the Fedasil website, this sub-corpus contains no articles dated between 2011 and 2012.
Table 2. Denominations of the migration phenomenon in which the NS the crisis is the nucleus of the corpus
| Denomination |
Number of absolute occurrences per actor |
| La crise de l’accueil (the reception crisis) |
SSAM (8)
Fedasil (7)
BRC (8)
Ciré (170) |
| La crise d’accueil* (the reception crisis) |
SSAM(7) |
| “La crise de l’accueil” (“the reception crisis”) |
Ciré (2)
BRC (1) |
| La crise de l’accueil des demandeurs d’asile (the asylum seekers reception crisis) |
Ciré (34) |
| La “crise de l’accueil” des demandeurs d’asile (asylum seekers “reception crisis”) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise aiguë de l’accueil (the acute reception crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise de l’accueil observée en Belgique de 2008 à 2012 (the reception crisis seen in Belgium from 2008 to 2012) |
Fedasil (1) |
| La crise de l’accueil rencontrée de 2008 à 2012 (the reception crisis encountered from 2008 to 2012) |
Fedasil (1) |
| De opvangcrisis (the reception crisis) |
SSAM (21)
VWV (13)
RKV (2) |
| De aanspelende opvangcrisis (the emerging reception crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De escalerende opvangcrisis (the escalating reception crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De aanhoudende opvangcrisis (the ongoing reception crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De huidige crisissituatie (the current crisis situation) |
SSAM (1) |
| De huidige opvangcrisis (the current reception crisis) |
SSAM (2) |
| De recente opvangcrisis (the recent reception crisis) |
SSAM (2) |
| De schrijnende opvangcrisis (the harrowing reception crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De acute opvangcrisis (the acute reception crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| De vluchtelingencrisissen (the refugee crisis) |
VWV (3) |
| De grote opvangcrisis (the great reception crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| La crise de l’asile (the asylum crisis) |
SSAM(16)
Fedasil (6)
Ciré (7) |
| La crise d’asile* (the asylum crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise actuelle de l’asile (the current asylum crisis) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise de l’asile de l’été 2015 (the asylum crisis of summer 2015) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise de l’asile de 2015 (the 2015 asylum crisis) |
SSAM (3)
Fedasil (3) |
| La crise d’asile de 2015* (the 2015 asylum crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| La “crise de l’asile” (the “asylum crisis”) |
Ciré (5) |
| La crise européenne de l’asile de 2015 (the European asylum crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise de l’asile de 2016 (the 2016 asylum crisis) |
Fedasil (1) |
| La crise d’asile de 2016* (the 2016 asylum crisis) |
Fedasil (1) |
| De asielcrisis (the asylum crisis) |
SSAM(12)
RKV (18)
VWV (5) |
| De vorige asielcrisis (the previous asylum crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| De “asielcrisis” (the “asylum crisis”) |
VWV (1) |
| De asielcrisis van 2015 (the 2015 asylum crisis) |
SSAM (4) |
| De meest recente asielcrisis (the latest asylum crisis) |
RKV (1) |
| De Europese asielcrisis van 2015 (the European asylum crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (2) |
| De vluchtelingencrisis (the refugee crisis) |
VWV (6)
RKB (4) |
| De Syrische vluchtelingencrisis (the Syrian refugee crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De grootste vluchtelingencrisis (the greatest refugee crisis) |
SSAM (1)
VWV (2) |
| De bootvluchtelingencrisis (the boat refugee crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De crisis van de bootvluchtelingen (the crisis of boatrefugees) |
RKV (1) |
| De hedendaagse vluchtelingencrisis (the contemporary refugee crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| La crise actuelle des réfugiés (the current refugee crisis) |
BRC (1) |
| La crise des réfugiés (the refugee crisis) |
Ciré (6) |
| La crise humanitaire (the humanitarian crisis) |
Fedasil (1)
BRC (2)
Ciré (1) |
| La crise humanitaire actuelle en Méditerranée (the current humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise humanitaire au Parc Maximilien (the humanitarian crisis in the Maximilian Park) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise humanitaire de 2015 (the 2015 humanitarian crisis) |
Ciré (1) |
| De grootste humanitaire crisis (the greatest humanitarian crisis) |
RKV (1) |
| De internationale crisissituatie (the international crisis situation) |
SSAM(6) |
| De crisis in oktober 2015 (the October 2015 crisis) |
VWV (1) |
| De asielzoekerscrisis (the asylum seekers crisis) |
RKV (1) |
| La crise de 2015 (the 2015 crisis) |
Fedasil (2)
BRC (2)
Ciré (3) |
| La crise politique de 2015 (the political crisis of 2015) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise de l’été 2015 (the crisis of summer 2015) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise de 2015-2016 (the 2015-2016 crisis) |
Fedasil (2) |
| La crise politique de l’accueil des réfugiés de 2015 (the political crisis of the refugees receptionin 2015) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise politique de la gestion de l’accueil au sein de l’UE (the political crisis of reception management in the EU) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise des politiques migratoires (the migration policies crisis) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise oubliée des sans-papiers (the forgotten crisis of the undocumented people) |
Ciré (2) |
| La crise actuelle des migrants (the current migrants crisis) |
Fedasil (1) |
| La crise des migrants (the migrants crisis) |
Ciré (2) |
| “La crise des migrants” (“the migrants crisis”) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise de la migration et de l’asile (the migration and asylum crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| De migratie- en asielcrisis (the migration and asylum crisis) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise migratoire (the migration crisis) |
SSAM (4)
Fedasil (1)
BRC (4)
Ciré (4) |
| De migratiecrisis (the migration crisis) |
SSAM (2) |
| “La crise migratoire” (“the migration crisis”) |
Ciré (3) |
| La crise “migratoire” (the “migration crisis) |
Ciré (1) |
| La crise migratoire de 2015 (the migration crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (1)
Ciré (1) |
| De migratiecrisis van 2015 (the migration crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise migratoire européenne (the European migration crisis) |
SSAM (4) |
| De Europese Migratiecrisis (the European migration crisis) |
SSMA (4) |
| La crise migratoire européenne de 2015 (the European migration crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (6) |
| De Europese (M)migratiecrisis van 2015 (The European (M)migration crisis of 2015) |
SSAM (8) |
| De Europese (M)migratiecrisis van 2015-2016 (The European (M)migration crisis of 2015-2016) |
SSAM (2) |
| La crise de la transmigration illégale (the crisis of illegal transmigration) |
SSAM (2) |
| Die [crisis] van illegale transitmigratie (the [crisis] of illegal transmigration) |
SSAM (2) |
| De aanhoudende crisis van de illegale transitmigratie (the ongoing crisis of the illegal transmigration) |
SSAM (1) |
| De nog steeds woekerende crisis van illegale transitmigratie (the still rampant crisis of illegal transmigration) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise de l’immigration clandestine de transit (the crisis of the illegal transit immigration) |
SSAM (1) |
| La crise persistente des migrants illégaux en transit (the ongoing crisis of illegal migrants in transit) |
SSAM (1) |
| * This slightly different construction appears a few times in policy notes. Indeed, la crise d’accueil (and later la crise d’asile (de 2015)) is mentioned in the French translation of the latter. The fact that these notes are discussed and written in Dutch, the mother tongue of the two SSAMs in our corpus, leads to the assumption that this is an inaccuracy in the French translation. |
17Through analysis of the co-occurrences of the NS the crisis, the different denominations used throughout the corpus can be identified (Table 2). These denominations have two main semantic-syntactic structures. On the one hand, a simple structure where the NS la crise is complemented by a relational adjective (la crise migratoire [the migratory crisis]) which comes to define the crisis. More rarely, the NS la crise is complemented by a qualifying adjective that characterises the crisis by intensity or geographically. On the other hand, a complex structure in which the NS la crise is complemented by a simple prepositional syntagm (the crisis + preposition + noun, such as la crise des réfugiés [the refugee crisis]) or a complex one (the crisis + noun + preposition + prepositional complement, such as la crise des réfugiés en Europe [the refugee crisis in Europe]). The resulting complex binomial phrase carries semantic issues specific to the NS1 + of (de in French) + NS2 sequences. “The NS of NS’s like these are decoded by the relational meaning established by the lexical-semantic and argumentative properties of the two nouns of the NS itself” (Bartning, 1998, p. 168). This dynamic relationship implied by the preposition of (Veniard, 2013b, p. 142) is analysed in context for each of the denominations.
18In order to compare usage over time, relative frequencies by year and by actor were calculated for each of the salient denominations in the corpus, bringing to light different discursive moments. This division shows that one or more denominations circulate among the various actors studied over the course of a more or less determined interval. Either the denomination stabilises and is used by all the actors, as is the case for the reception crisis and the asylum crisis, or it is negotiated by the actors and circulates without stabilising (as happens with the humanitarian crisis).
Graph 1. Evolution of the occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of denominations appearing the most frequently in Table 2
19To examine the way in which the denomination used serves to frame the speech of the various actors in the corpus, we started by analysing the lexical-morpho-syntactic composition and the semantics of the denomination before moving the focus on to analysis of the co-occurrences and semes of the crisis updated in discourse. The circulation of these denominations allowed us to pinpoint the different tensions between actors in discourse.
Graph 2. Evolution of the occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise de l’accueil/de opvangcrisis by actor and by year
- 7 de opvangcrisis in Dutch and la crise de l’accueil in French
- 8 Although we have no data for Fedasil for this period, we have identified that the Agency later ref (...)
20The denomination the reception crisis7 is used by all actors in the corpus8 to refer to the saturation of the reception network in Belgium between 2008 and 2012. Fedasil’s 2012 report highlights this stabilisation of the denomination in the Belgian migration sector with the following metadiscursive remark: “The Agency is driven by a new dynamic springing from what has in common parlance become ‘the reception crisis’” (Fedasil, 2013).
21In French, the binomial syntagm la crise de l’accueil presents a complex structure in which the NS1 la crise is characterised by the simple prepositional NS2 de l’accueil. The preposition used, de (of), denotes a meaning relational to the characterising noun. The definite article l’ has a referential meaning (Kleiber, 1983, p. 87): It refers to the reception of asylum seekers in Belgium between 2008 and 2012. Actually, the complete expression (la crise de l’accueil des demandeurs d’asile [the asylum seekers reception crisis]) occasionally appears in the corpus. From a discursive point of view, the term crisis in this complex NS takes on another meaning, as a state of being: It is the reception network that is in crisis, as opposed to the complex NS the asylum crisis (see below).
- 9 reception in English.
- 10 crisis in English.
22In Dutch, the denomination de opvangcrisis is a compound noun formed from the two nouns (De Haas and Trommelen, 1993, pp. 10-13) opvang9 and crisis10. In this construction, it is the second noun that carries the meaning of the compound noun: De opvangcrisis literally means the reception crisis while de crisissituatie means the crisis situation. The relational sense imparted by the NS1 de NS2 structure in French therefore corresponds to that of N2N1 in Dutch.
23While SSAM, Fedasil, BRC and RKV use the simple pre-positional NS de l’accueil (of the reception), the associations use the complex pre-positional NS de l’accueil des demandeurs d’asile (of the reception of asylum seekers). Ciré and VWV thus stress the humanitarian dimension of the reception crisis by highlighting the consequences of network saturation on asylum seekers (“sur les demandeurs d’asile”).
- 11 de acute opvangcrisis in Dutch and la crise aiguë de l’accueil in French.
24While the study of co-occurrents with an index greater than or equal to 2 shows that the actors of the corpus are all concerned with proper management of the host network (“solve”, “solutions”, “answers”, “exit”), the actors do not construct the crisis in the same way. While the SSAM confronts the reception crisis “à court terme” (in the short term), actualising the seme [+short duration], the co-occurrences of the reception crisis in the discourse of associations actualise the seme [+long duration]: the crisis “perdure” (persists), is “interminable” (interminable) (Ciré, 2012), occurs “op nieuw” (again), “voor het derde jaar op rij” (for the third year in a row) (VWV, 2012). In general, many adjectives are used to qualify the reception crisis, actualizing the seme [+intensity] of crisis (the acute reception crisis11; VWV, 2012). These often coincide with a syntactic construction in which the reception crisis occupies the place of subject; whereas in discourse about resolving the so-called crisis, the reception crisis tends to be found in complement, as the direct object of the verbs “solve” or “manage”. In the discourse of associations, the intensity of the crisis increases over time: the crisis “s’est amplifiée” (has escalated) (Ciré, 2010); it “nam de opvangcrisis weer dramatische proporties” (took again a dramatic turn) (VWV, 2012). These co-occurrences crystallise a discursive tension between control and non-management of the crisis. The semes that denote rupture are almost absent in both sub-corpora.
Graph 3. Evolution of occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise de l’asile/de asielcrisis by actor and by year
25From 2015 onwards, the denomination the asylum crisis establishes its place alongside the reception crisis in the corpus of discourse for all actors, particularly on the Dutch-speaking side. In discourse, this denomination unanimously refers to an increase in the number of asylum applications in Belgium and is explicitly distinguished from the preceding crisis, the reception crisis (2011-2012), described as the saturation of the Belgian reception network. While the two denominations coexist during this period, they designate different events. In fact, the denomination the asylum crisis is itself characterised by prepositional NSs situating the crisis in time (“the 2015 asylum crisis”).
- 12 asylum in English.
- 13 crisis in English.
26From a morpho-syntactic point of view, the French denomination la crise de l’asile has a similar structure to that of la crise de l’accueil (a complex binominal syntagm in of). However, from a discursive point of view, it is no longer the capacity of the reception network that is in a state of crisis: Rather, the crisis results from “la forte hausse du nombre de demandes d’asile au cours de la période de juin à janvier” (the sharp increase in the number of asylum applications over the June to January period) (policy notes, 2016). In Dutch, the name asielcrisis composed of the names asiel12 and crisis13 takes on the same discursive meaning. This adjustment of meaning has the effect of shifting the problem from being one of reception network capacity to one of pressure from asylum applications, which the media portrays as ever-increasing in number (Sow, 2016).
27This is reflected in the solutions to the crisis presented in the policy notes, that focus on managing flows rather than increasing reception places. As with the reception crisis, the co-occurrents (“resolve”, “exit”, “answer”, “solution”, “lessons”) focus on the management of the asylum crisis, updating the seme [that we want to see the end of] (Veniard, 2013a). Fedasil also insists on such proper management (“confront”, “management of”) despite the “flux soudain” (sudden flow) of requests. RKV, that manages reception centres with BRC, frequently uses the denomination “de asielcrisis” (the asylum crisis) and emphasises the “solidariteit” (solidarity) of citizens and volunteers.
28Ciré and VWV make little use of the denomination the asylum crisis. Very early on, Ciré challenges the particular attention given to the number of arrivals: “Asylum requests in Belgium: An unprecedented and unmanageable crisis?” (Ciré, 2016). Distancing itself from the view that the influx of asylum seekers is a singularity, Ciré shows a certain reluctance to use the crisis in discourse. In the corpus, Ciré either qualifies its use of the asylum crisis by doting it with quotation marks: “la ‘crise de l’asile’” (the “asylum crisis”); or, more simply, by deploying deictic denominations that situate the crisis in time: “cette nouvelle crise” (this new crisis), “la crise actuelle” (the current crisis), “la crise de 2015” (the crisis of 2015), “la crise de l’été 2015” (the crisis of summer 2015). But from 2015 onwards, Ciré’s annual reports —like those of VWV— referring extensively to the reception crisis from 2011 to 2014 contain few denominations built on the NS the crisis; and they are found mainly as headlines in their brochures and conference speeches.
292015 marks a new discursive moment during which unanimity on the framing of the migration phenomenon breaks down, as a set of other denominations emerges and circulates in parallel with the asylum crisis: crise humanitaire/de humanitaire crisis, crise migratoire/de migratiecrisis, crise des réfugiés/vluchtelingencrisis and crise des migrants (only in French).
Graph 4. Evolution of occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise humanitaire/de humanitaire crisis by actor and by year
30The expanded NS the humanitarian crisis is used at different periods in the corpus and is not, strictly speaking, an event denomination. Built on the basis of the NS the crisis and the adjective qualifier humanitarian, it refers to various events: “la crise humanitaire syrienne” (the Syrian humanitarian crisis; BRC, 2012), “la crise humanitaire touchant actuellement l’Europe et la Belgique” (the humanitarian crisis now affecting Europe and Belgium; Fedasil, 2015), “la crise humanitaire actuelle en Méditerranée” (the current humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean; Ciré, 2015), “de humanitaire crisis aan de grenzen van de europese unie” (the humanitarian crisis at the gates of the European Union; VWV, 2020). Since this NS is not enough on its own to refer to an event, it is often characterised by prepositional NSs that position it in space and time. It thus receives the status of “designating occasional events”, tending to “lose a large part of its capacity to refer once the discursive moment has passed” (Calabrese, 2013, p. 186).
- 14 The Fedasil peak observed in 2015 in fact represents a single occurrence of la crise humanitaire, (...)
31Such designators, used particularly by humanitarian and community actors, focus on the humanitarian consequences of the current crisis14 (whatever it may be). The co-occurrents (“borders”, “international”, “membres” [states], “obligation”) show that this framework imparts an international dimension to the crisis and calls on the responsibility of the European states, while updating the seme [+intensity] (“plus qu’alarmante” [more than alarming], “une catastrophe humanitaire” [a humanitarian disaster], “tragique” [tragic], “la situation est intenable” [the situation is unsustainable]).
Graph 5. Evolution of occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise des réfugiés/de vluchtelingencrisis by actor and by year
Graph 6. Evolution of occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise des migrants by actor and by year
32The denominations la crise des réfugiés and la crise des migrants are complex binomial syntagms in of (de in French), whose relational meaning tends to present the crisis as resulting from refugees or migrants. Both these denominations are largely absent from the corpus and are mainly used in 2015 and 2016. The denomination de migrantencrisis (the migrants crisis) does not appear at all in the Dutch-speaking corpus; instead, the denomination de vluchtelingencrisis (the refugee crisis) is given preference. This also applies to media corpora, in which we observe that the French-language Belgian media use the denomination migrant much more frequently than the Dutch-language media, and the denomination réfugié relatively less frequently (Mistiaen, 2021, p. 315). Ciré mainly uses la crise des réfugiés (the refugee crisis) without quotation marks and la crise des migrants (the migrants crisis) in quotation marks. This shows a distancing from the very way of naming the protagonists of the crisis that favours refugee over migrant, possibly due to the controversy launched by the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera about these two terms (Calabrese, 2018). Later, both Ciré and VWV challenge these denominations (see below).
Graph 7. Evolution of occurrences (in relative frequencies 10–5) of the denomination la crise migratoire/de migratiecrisis by actor and by year
- 15 migration in English
- 16 crisis in English.
33The denomination the migration crisis appears in the corpus from 2015 and peaks in 2017-2018. In French, the denomination is constructed from the NS la crise characterised by the denominal relational adjective migratoire (which can be replaced by a complement of the noun: de la migration [of migration]). This type of construction “can be translated compositionally into another language by terms of the [N N] form” (Harastani et al., 2013, p. 313). As a matter of fact, in Dutch, the denomination de migratiecrisis is a noun composed of the nouns migratie15 and crisis16, literally translating to “the migration crisis”. From a semantic point of view, the relational denominal adjective migratoire introduces an element of ambiguity in characterising the crisis: the crisis may be the result of migration (“agentive” relation, in which migration is the agent) or that which agitates migration (“objective” relation, in which migration is the object). This ambiguity springs from the “enunciative underdetermination” of some nominal adjectives, understood as the fact that these “leave in a state of under-determination the enunciative handling of the term that underpins them” (Krieg-Planque, 2002, p. 103). This under-determination, added to the fact that the adjective relates to the act of migrating rather than to the actors, makes it a more “neutral” term (Calabrese and Mistiaen, 2018), that does not take a position for or against either of the actors.
34In the corpus, the denomination the migration crisis is mainly used by the SSAM: Ciré only uses it with quotation marks. Its most frequent co-occurrents are “européenne” (European) and “2015” (giving rise to the complex NS “la crise migratoire européenne de 2015” [the European migratory crisis of 2015] as well as “résoudre” [resolve] and “confronté” [confront]). While the reception crisis and the asylum crisis are geographically located in Belgium, the migration crisis is shifted to the European level. The adjective European, which is denominational and relational, also has semantic ambiguity: Does it refer to the migration crisis in Europe or of Europe? The reformulations of this NS in discourse help shed light on the matter: “During the migration crisis Europe underwent in 2015 and 2016, the government and the asylum authorities gave their all” (policy notes, 2018). Therefore, the NS does indeed refer to the migration crisis that the European Union has faced and in which Belgium has played its role successfully. In this case, the crisis no longer refers to an increase in asylum applications linked to a complex set of events, but to the migration phenomenon itself.
35From 2018 onwards, a new crisis emerges in discourse. In the usage of denominations surrounding the migration phenomenon built from the NS the crisis, we observe two phenomena.
36Firstly, the SSAM produces new denominations built from the NS the crisis, such as “la crise de l’immigration clandestine de transit” (the crisis of illegal immigration in transit), “la crise persistante des migrants illégaux en transit” (the persistent crisis of illegal migrants in transit), “de aanhoudende crisis van de illegale transitmigration” (the ongoing crisis of the illegal transmigration): “The European migration crisis of 2015 and the ongoing illegal transmigration crisis have made the need for increased capacity even more worrying” (policy notes, 2018). These denominations emphasise the illegality and clandestineness of the protagonists, imposing a “criminalised” representation of them. None of these denominations appears to stabilise in the corpus studied.
37Secondly, the associations begin to discuss and challenge the circulating denominations constructed on the NS the crisis. The definite article la (the) preceding the NS is replaced by an indefinite article, reflecting the fact that there is now negotiation around the denomination of the event. Furthermore, the most frequent co-occurrents of crisis are quotation marks and the word crisis itself, attesting to the shift from common usage to metadiscursive usage:
No, it is not a “refugee crisis”, it is a crisis of humanity. Simply because it’s about humans who should protect other humans from the madness of some other humans. (Ciré, 2016)
Let’s not allow our representatives make us believe in a “migration crisis” that is nothing less than a crisis of the reception policies implemented by the EU and its Member States. (Ciré, 2016)
- 17 deze zelf veroorzaakte crisis in Dutch and cette crise provoquée in French.
38VWV, for its part, re-frames its discourse using the designations “solidariteitscrisis” (a crisis of solidarity), “een eu-solidariteitscrisis” (a crisis of European solidarity), and even “de griekse mensenrechtencrisis” (the Greek crisis of human rights). The term crisis is itself the subject of metadiscursive comments: “However, this is not a matter of migration ‘crisis’. To speak of a ‘crisis’ implies that the problem can be settled and resolved quickly and definitively, whereas the issue of migration and exile has always existed” (Ciré, 2017). VWV, for its part, plays on the seme [+unexpected] of crisis by designating it as this provoked crisis17 (VWV, 2020). The meaning of the crisis is thus adjusted so that it is no longer about migration but about the values that society wants to advocate (“a crisis of humanity”) and the reception policies implemented in Europe.
39This “nouvelle crise” (new crisis) is not so clearly defined in the discourse of Fedasil, BRC, and RKV. As a matter of fact, the news bulletin celebrating New Year 2020 positions this crisis as a continuity: “For 2020, many challenges await those involved in asylum in Belgium. Unsurprisingly, the crisis will not end this year” (Fedasil, 2020). The new character of the crisis is not a given, since there is no clear rupture with previous year. In fact, quite the opposite is true: The crisis seems to be taking root.
40Qualified as “nouvelle” (new) without the appearance of a rupture from the preceding crisis(es), and at the same time defined in the negative (“This is not a migrant crisis”; Ciré, 2017), the crisis now presents the same linguistic processes observed by Marie Veniard (2013b, pp. 146-147) around the war in Afghanistan, signalling a series of events in motion that present common elements and have some continuity.
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41The reception crisis, the asylum crisis, the migratory crisis… The NS the crisis is the nucleus of the various denominations, consensual or discussed, that circulate in the discourse of the various migration governance actors from 2011 to 2020. These actors face the challenges both of defining the crisis event and of taking measures to “resolve” it.
42Our analysis pinpoints several distinct discursive moments. In 2011-2012, the denomination the reception crisis was used by all actors to consensually designate the saturation of the reception network. From 2015 onwards, there were various denominations in circulation (the asylum crisis, situated in Belgium; the migration crisis, the migrants crisis and the refugee crisis, going beyond national borders and referring to an event that occurs in Europe); this attests to a process of negotiation among the actors, each of whom attempts to impose their own framing of the migration phenomenon. In 2018, while SSAM produced new denominations (“de crisis van de illegale transitmigratie” [the crisis of the illegal transmigration]), the other actors stopped using the denominations in circulation and challenged them.
43Among the actors studied, SSAM turns out to be a producer of denominations. Meanwhile, the associations Ciré and VWV are authors of counter-discourses that seek to de-construct the use of denominations based on the crisis (including the word crisis itself, shifting it from common usage to metadiscursive usage) but without managing to impose a stable alternative. These two linguistic processes operating in the denomination of the migration phenomenon highlight the linguistic reflexivity of the actors involved and the symbolic conflicts that play out through the promotion or deconstruction of some denominations.
44Finally, the use of the NS the crisis in the naming of the migration phenomenon turns out to be cyclical. This suggests, firstly, that the migration phenomenon continues to be constructed in discourse under a framework of crisis management and that the “vision” —despite being announced upon creation of the SSAM post aimed at “institutionalising” migration skills— has not yet been attained; and secondly, that the use of the word crisis constitutes an argumentative resource. This would explain why the denomination is so frequently employed in the discourse of the actors, whether to support or criticise the way in which the so-called crisis is managed.
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