The Crisis-Solidarity Nexus in the Context of Migration Discourse

The literature suggests that solidarity becomes more relevant in times of crisis. Several studies have stipulated a link between solidarity and crisis, looking at various crises in the past decades, including in the context of migration. However, the crisis-solidarity nexus remains under-theorized as crisis effects are often implied by the researchers’ selection of the period(s) of investigation. What is missing is an analysis of solidarity during both crisis and non-crisis situations. We contribute to closing this research gap at the discursive level by taking a closer look at the political discourse on migration in Germany. Drawing on a reflexive and dynamic understanding of crisis, taking into account both issue salience and politicisation, we analyse how solidarity responds to different situations of (non-)crisis. For this purpose, we examine all speeches given during plenary sessions of the German national parliament, the Bundestag, between 1949 and 2023. Our analysis proceeds in two steps: Firstly, we use a dictionary approach to identify various situations of (non-)crisis based on the salience and politicisation of migration as well as to trace the development of solidarity references in the context of migration. Secondly, we analyse the solidarity statements in more detail. We identify different conceptions of solidarity and analyse how they have been used over time. Are certain understandings of solidarity persistent over time or do they relate to specific events or specific addressees only? Can we observe any differences between political parties? By answering these questions, this paper contributes to the re-dimensioning of the crisis-solidarity nexus in the context of migration. It also contributes to the research on political communication in the context of migration and contested policy fields more generally.