Discursive Shift on Migration Policy in Swedish Politics and Press Media : A Critical Look at Securitization of Migration in Sweden

Sammanfattning: The refugeecrisis was a turning point in Swedish exceptionalism a discursive shift has somehowoccurred within the Swedish policy debate and mainstream media whereby the '(im)migrant' isconstructed as a potential security threat. To achieve the goal of the 'security' concerns of thisthesis, a theoretical framework of the social constructivist perspective is to assess howsecuritization is discursively constructed within discursive power relations among differentsocietal actors an d to understand identifying conditions that potentially have enabled this shift.Herein, this research synthesizes media content and political opinion to analyze the shaping andchang ing of the discourse on securitizing migration between 2014 and 2017 by blending qualitativecontent analysis with critical discourse analysis. One of the conclusions reached is the analysishighlights discourses once propagated and shifted gradually in the political sphere and in a sensea certain group of immigrants is constructed as an existential threat within it.