Social Justice and the Portrayal of Migrants in International Organization for Migration’s World Migration Reports

Abstract

Social justice is a framework that has been at the forefront of technical communication in recent years. While social justice is often applied in participatory studies, it can also feature in studies using quantitative methods. In this study, I use corpus-based critical discourse analysis to investigate the portrayal of migrants in the World Migration Reports, the flagship publication of the International Organization for Migration. I emphasize context to bring in the social justice framework in this analysis. This study finds that the World Migration Reports represent migrants within various topoi, with a particular focus on the topos of advantage and that of danger/threat.