How do citizens discuss solidarity during migration situations? And
does securitization of migration go along with de-solidarization?
This paper examines the individual level of citizens’ communication
on solidarity (or not) with migrants along three main frames
identified by the literature on solidarity and deservingness:
economy, identity, and security. In contrast to existing studies, we
offer a long-term perspective (2005–2019) which enables us to
capture in a more precise way changes or continuities in solidarity
discourses triggered by migration contexts. Compiling large
corpora and relying on a corpus linguistic approach, we conduct a
quantitative cross-time analysis, which combines content analysis,
machine learning and dictionary-based methods. Germany serves
as a representative case displaying both scenarios of ‘welcome` as
well as ‘rejection culture’. The analysis reveals a primacy of the
security frames in the public discourse in Germany, which was,
albeit, not specifically induced but rather amplified by the 2015/16
migration crisis. Our findings counter, however, the assumption
that the dominance of security frames during the migration crisis
triggered a shift in discourse toward de-solidarization with
migrants. Thus, our study makes an important contribution to the
research on migration showing that solidarity and securitization are
not necessarily opposite concepts in the public debate.