The political discourse around the law on foreigners in the Spanish press

Abstract

Immigration and its regulation are key issues in society and, as such, are subject to political discourses that show the arguments of the different social actors, especially political parties. Press is one of the main mechanisms used by these social actors to show such discourses. Hence, this paper analyzes how six Spanish newspapers presented the political discourses on the Foreigners law, as the main legal-political instrument to manage immigration, from 2003 to 2016, as well as the position of the political parties that were the main sources of discourse. To achieve this, we worked with the Zapata-Barrero model, which categorizes political discourses on immigration into two types: pro-active discourses and re-active discourses, which shows their preference for managing multiculturalism as a challenge or a problem, respectively.