Shifting Rhetoric and Changes in Migration Patterns to the United States

• In Event: Rhetoric and the Politics of Belonging

Abstract

From around 2014, there was a shift in the rhetorical arguments of migration activists which placed greater emphasis on the safety concerns of asylum seekers coming to the United States. Starting from that time, political and legal activists increasingly drew parallels between the dangers that cross border migrants were facing in their home countries from decentralized criminal violence with dangers that refugees faced fleeing civil war and more politicized violence. This rhetorical change was reflected in an increase in the number of asylum seekers coming to the United States, which in turn has lead to an overwhelming of the traditional US migration regulatory systems. This paper seeks to examine this change in rhetoric concerning migration and asylum seekers to determine the causal relationship. Did the shifting rhetoric reflect changes on the ground, or has the rhetoric in fact spurred increased use of asylum seeking as method of migration?

Author

• Fred P Cocozzelli, St John's University-New York