Why some migration narratives are successful

What: Successful narratives resonate with people’s feelings

Our research shows that successful narratives should resonate with individuals’ emotions and feelings. Using experimental methodologies, we found that personal testimonies have a strong capacity to influence how we feel and think about immigration.

Stories of immigrants suffering discrimination or overcoming various adversities have the power to produce identification and empathy, thereby changing individual attitudes and behaviours. For instance, a story that shows clear examples of discrimination and victimisation can make you intensely angry while also increasing your empathy for the person suffering these injustices. Similarly, a story of heroism and overcoming adversity can make you feel moved and in awe.

Successful narratives should also meet certain basic conditions of consistency in line with individual empirical knowledge and widely shared local and cultural perceptions. For example, we found that EU-funded information campaigns in Gambia and Turkey had little ability to influence potential migrants’ decisions to migrate. This results from the mismatch between information campaign narratives and dominant local narratives. More concretely, we found that the experiences shared by friends and relatives who lived in or had migrated to Europe had much more influence on people’s decision to migrate than counter-arguments presented by EU-funded campaigns aimed at dissuading them.

Who: The messenger matters

Our analysis found that immigrants or people on the move rarely find themselves as narrators. Instead, politicians are the primary messengers of narratives. And not simply all politicians; we found that extreme-right politicians are particularly successful in disseminating migration narratives through both traditional and social media, given their communication apparatus, funding, message coherence and events creation. This contrasts with the strategies of other more pro-immigration politicians, who may remain silent on issues related to migration (which is often perceived as an uncomfortable subject) or have a purely reactive response. Journalists are also trapped between the need to attract public attention (and in the digital era, as many clicks as possible) and the unintended effect of amplifying the voice of the most controversial politicians.

When: Right place, right time

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Windows of opportunities’ are critical factors in a narrative’s success. For instance, a perceived “crisis” or a discussion around a new law can potentially lead to new and transformative narratives or can reinforce existing ones.

When windows of opportunity present themselves, it is critical for actors (anyone wishing to put forward a new narrative) to respond quickly. Because of limited capacities, resources and funding, actors have the threat of “fizzing out” after initial successes or once their initial window of opportunity closes.  In certain situations, a political party’s reluctance to engage in debates can hinder its ability to promote its narratives effectively. In all cases, our research found that narrative success depends on actors’ capacity to respond to time-sensitive opportunities.

Where: Politicisation and media narratives

A key question is how successful narratives travel from one sphere to the other, for instance between media, political debate and policymaking. Politicisation, understood as salience and polarization around an issue, plays an important role. Interestingly, we found out that the more an issue is politicised, the more political discourse shapes and is shaped by media narratives.

Our research also confirms that social media is indeed a politically polarising space. Irrespective of whether a message is anti- or pro-immigration, algorithms favour messages that create strong reactions. But social media do not seem to introduce new narratives but rather amplify already existing messages from traditional media narratives.