Migration has become a key issue in electoral campaigns all across Europe. The 2024 elections to the European Parliament will be no exception to this. By framing migration as a key threat to our security, far-right parties seek to gain more seats in the European Parliament. In this podcast, we will put the European election in perspective. We will discuss more generally about how migration narratives play out in Brussels. What kind of migration narratives are dominant in the EU? And how to they actually influence EU policy-making processes?  

These are some of the questions that will be tackled in this third programme of BRIDGES Podcast Series, which counts on the participation of expert Florian Trauner, co-director of the VUB’s Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Migration and Minorities (BIRMM-VUB) and member of BRIDGES, and Omar Ba, community organiser, activist and politician, and former candidate in the elections to the European Parliament in 2019. The two of them bring their expertise and insights to this podcast conducted by Gaia Romero, researcher at BIRMM-VUB. 

How can civil society organisations help counter exclusionary discourses on migration? What are the best strategies to promote inclusive accounts from the grassroots? Civil society representatives from Germany, Italy, and Spain bring their own experiences to the 2nd programme of the BRIDGES Podcast Series, produced by the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and funded by the EU H2020 programme.

This podcast includes audio fragments from news stories by Al Jazeera English, The Telegraph and The Wall Street Journal.

What is the role of media in producing and re-producing certain narratives on migration? Why are Ukrainian refugees being portrayed as victims while people fleeing other conflicts are portrayed as a threat? Are media contributing to the increasing polarisation around migration issues in European public and political debates? Ferruccio Pastore, BRIDGES Scientific Co-Coordinator and Director of FIERI; May Bulman, Social Affairs Correspondent at The Independent; and András Földes, journalist and video-journalist at Telex.hu; try to shed some light on these questions under the moderation of Mar Sabé Dausà.

This podcast is part of the BRIDGES Podcast Series, produced by the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) and funded by the EU H2020 programme.