The integration of refugees into societies of the global north in the past has received limited public and scientific attention (Korntheuer, Pritchard & Maehler, 2017). Due to the civil war in Syria and political issues of terrorism increasing in the Middle East, the number of asylum seekers and refugees in the European countries rose enormously. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 2 million people have applied as asylum seekers in Europe in the year of 2015 and the majority of them are from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq (UNHCR, 2015). In 2015, after receiving this massive number of refugees in Europe, integration of refugees became an important issue in the whole world. The number of publications and policy documents in the field of refugee integration has increased significantly.

What are subjectivities patterns, we can see in this suprastatal Refugee Discourse? Are refugees imagined here as a risk, as a burden, as people in need or as resource?

The paper presents the analysis of relevant policy documents of suprastatal actors, to be analyzed as discourse agents within the discursive field of “creating the image of the refugee”. Important suprastatal discourse agents like the European Union (EU), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will be analyzed regarding the image they design in their policy documents.   

The policy discourse analysis of the image of refugees created will be done by analyzing policy documents of EU, OECD, UNESCO and UNHCR. The data base chosen will be white papers. The majority of the policy papers are written in the white paper format, which offers authoritative perspectives on or solutions to a problem (Herman, 2013). White papers in the European Commission glossary are defined as a “document containing proposals for European Union (EU) action in a specific area”. All the samples (white papers) have to be written in English and published after 2014 in field of refugee integration. This study focuses on documents which have been written from 2014 because the number of asylum seekers and refugees in the European countries rose enormously in this duration. This paper will present the analysis of 15 white paper policy documents. The research methodology used will relate to a discourse analytical research perspective, integrating content analysis as a methodical tool. Qualitative content analysis as a systematical approach of data analysis uses coding of the empirical material (Berelson, 1952; GAO, 1996; Krippendorff, 1980; Weber, 1990 and Stemler, 2001). Codes will be related to the theoretical and methodical framework of discourses as powerful imaginative practice.

The paper presents the results of data analysis of policy documents and discusses the implications of the images created for potentials and risks in refugee integration. Here, the perspective of “images” on refugees and the collective “imaginary” of the refugee will be related to the discourse perspective.

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