Muslim Refugees as a Security Threat: Analyzing Global Political - Media Narrative

This analysis offers an overview of the discursive strategies that portray the securitization of Muslim refugees in political and media narratives. There are a variety of reasons why people flee their native nation in search of safety in other countries. The continuing and ongoing wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan have been the main factors. The perspective on refugees and migrants issue has risen to the fore, contributing to the securitization of immigration considered as a contributing factor in the creation of refugees and migration global national security issue. Significantly, the current study examines how refugees have been portrayed as a security concern in global political and media discourse, as well as how they have been politicized as a threat to their nations' and societal security.

After the September 11 attacks and the US-led war on terror, refugees became a greater security problem for host countries. As a consequence, states around the world are concerned about perceived security dangers posed by refugees (Isotalo, 2009). At the European Union level, migration has been seen as a danger to national identity (Farny, 2016).

Discourses on the securitization of Afghan, Syrian, and Iraqi refugees have revealed that the relationship between refugees and the West is somehow troubling in nature and it represents perceived security threats. It has also revealed that the integration of refugees in western societies has been securitized by politicians and policy-makers, which further triggered the public discourse. Hence, political and media discourses have securitized the refugees as an existential threat to the western countries, and as a result of which extraordinary measures and policies towards these refugees have been formulated leading to strict policy measures taken in the West.

So far, immigrants and refugees have become equal targets and present a turning point in the security discourse. Additionally, the rhetoric structure of the security discourses may contain a wide range of terms, statements, phrases, and techniques from ambiguous and diffuse descriptions of threats, and solutions to explicit descriptions of the construct. Different discursive strategies would be amply applied by different actors of securitization (policymakers, state systems, public, scholars, and media). 

Nonetheless, hostile attitudes intensify the fear of the public about refugees considering them as a security threat. Additionally in the future, by studying variables scientifically, we might be able to comprehend further dimensions of security narratives on refugees and especially Muslim refugees.