Self-Deportation and Forced Choice as Discursive Maneuver: Force and “Voluntary” Migration

The words we use to understand migration underpin how we attempt to control it. This paper uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to trace the use of “self-deportation.” I find the word was framed in different ways by media, academics and political experts. I focus on how political experts used self-deportation as a form of dog-whistle politics and associated it with a variety of enforcement-only approaches to immigration policy. I consider the relatively consistent political framing participated in shifting policy debates because they normalized the force and coercion implied by deportation.