Migration narratives across national media, EU politics, and EU policymaking: a comparative analysis of the 2015 refugee crisis and the 2022 Ukrainian displacement

This study examines migration narratives in relation to two EU-level migration events: the 2015 refugee crisis and the 2022 Ukrainian displacement. It analyses narratives in Member States’ news and in EU political and policy arenas, their evolution across such arenas, and their impact on policy outcomes, highlighting variations across two distinct settings. Grounded in Garcés-Mascareñas & Pastore’s Migration Narrative Success, it integrates content analysis, discourse analysis, and semi-structured interviews. Findings show that solidaristic narratives in 2022 were highly ‘pervasive’ in all arenas and ‘transformative’ into policy output, facilitating the swift activation of the EU Temporary Protection Directive. Conversely, in 2015, narratives advocating support to frontline EU Member States, though pervasive, only partly influenced policymaking, which eventually prioritised externalisation over internal solidarity. This diachronic comparison underscores the role of ‘setting’—the historical and geopolitical context—in shaping narrative success. In 2015, Europe faced what was framed as a ‘refugee crisis’, generating polarised narratives that struggled to achieve hegemony. By contrast, the Ukraine war in 2022 reframed displacement within broader geopolitical concerns. This enabled migration-related narratives to emerge through a less polarised lens—foregrounding urgency, proximity, and shared European responsibility—thus permeating all arenas and translating smoothly into policy outcomes, becoming hegemonic.