The emigration-immigration nexus: public framing of the migration phenomenon in Portugal and its social impact

Under the scope of the Integral Human Development programme from CADOS: Católica Doctoral School, the goal of this project is to identify and critically analyze how social representations of the phenomenon of migration are connected in their various dimensions, thus influencing attitudes and perceptions about migrants. The Portuguese reality, as a country that is known for creating generations of emigrants and as a point of arrival for several migratory groups (Peixoto et al., 2016) will be considered from a structural perspective. The research will focus on five contemporary trends: the decrease of immigration and the vast increase of emigration between 2010 and 2015; migration for humanitarian reasons (especially the “refugee crisis” of 2015 and its reemergence in 2021); the migration of European citizens (following Brexit, in 2016); and the consequences from the COVID-19 pandemic. At a first stage, an analysis will be conducted on how the Portuguese press portrayed such issues, through both a quantitative and a qualitative approach. Later, the study will include focus groups with segments of the population, as well as semi-structured interviews with journalists. The research will start from the following hypothesis: the public framing of the migration phenomenon takes on different patterns, since it represents various aspects of Portuguese emigration and immigration.