Constructions of Community in a Local Daily Newspaper Over Time

Introduction

As David Cohen (1985) has argued, communities are symbolic constructions that serve to give a

sense of belonging and identity to its members. These communities are, due to their size, often

largely imagined communities (Anderson, 1983) in the sense that most of their members never meet

more than a few hundred co-members and yet there remains a strong sense of communal

belonging. However the post-modern condition has wrought changes that have challenged

traditional conceptions of community in many ways, two of which are salient for this paper.

Spatially, immigration has challenged the taken-for-granted homogeneity of European countries and

cities. In turn, this has led to a questioning of the foundations of community in Europe where

governments and society have been faced with the task of how to include, or indeed exclude,

migrants.

Technologically speaking, this facilitated the emergence of non-traditional communities, that

are not necessarily based upon where one lives nor even one’s country but rather virtual

communities formed along interest lines (Delanty: 2009) that have now become part of many

people’s social reality. A crucial element of this technological change has been how media

landscapes have changed. Like the new formations of communities, news, at least for many in

Western Europe, is similarly unbounded and increasingly rapid so that European populations receive

news from an ever-increasing list of sources that are almost instantaneous. As David Harvey (1990)

has noted, in the post-modern world, time and space have been compressed.

In terms of media use, despite dwindling sales amidst growing competition from other

sources, (local) newspapers can still play an active role in communicating news that is relevant to

their geographically bounded constituencies and, it will be argued, in constructing and maintaining

an image of a cohesive local community.1

This chapter set outs to provide a critically linguistic investigation into how the idea of a

coherent community is discursively constructed in the media – more specifically a local newspaper –

over time within an urban community. The analysis will be a linguistic one based on the tenets of

critical discourse analysis (hereafter, CDA - see below). My main hypothesis here is that local

newspapers serve to inculcate their readers with a cohesive and positive self-image of the local

community and that this is often done by delineating the community from outside influences –

namely immigrants.

1 For research on the impact of local newspapers on communities see: Rothenbuhler, Mullen, DeLaurell and

Choon (1996) and Stamm, Emig and Hesse (1997)

To test this hypothesis, I will focus on how community is constructed in the urban area of

Brighton, UK, and what role is played in that process by a local newspaper. In the course of my

research, I will aim to answer three research questions:

1. How does the local newspaper construct the local community? And following this;

2. Who or what is the local community constructed in opposition to?

3. Does this change over time?

My empirical data is taken from articles about immigration found in The Brighton Argus (hereafter,

The Argus) and the discourse surrounding immigration into the Brighton area will be analysed. As a

further hypothesis, following van Dijk (1983) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001) I expect to find examples

of positive in-group and negative out-group representations within the discourse surrounding

immigration in the newspaper.

The work that follows takes immigration into the UK as its starting point of reference.

Though by no means homogenous before, the UK has seen a steady increase in the number of

migrants since the end of the Second World War. During the 1960s 70s and 80s, the issue of

migration became politicised, as did the concept of ‘race relations’. However, it is only during the

latter part of the 20th Century and the first decade of the new millennium, that immigration has not

only been highly politicised, but also mediatised. Throughout Tony Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister

(1997-2007), there was an almost constant cycle of government action, media reaction and public

reaction about immigration, and especially asylum application (Mulvey: 2010). The analysis is further

grounded, geographically, by a focus on the city of Brighton and Hove on the South coast of the

United Kingdom and an explanation is given in a later section.

For sake of clarity it is worth briefly describing the plan of the chapter. In the following

section a number of theories of community will be expounded upon, most relevantly here are David

Cohen’s work on symbolic construction, Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities and David

Harvey’s writing on post-modern communities. The next section will introduce the local urban

context of Brighton, the wider area of Sussex and the local newspaper, The Argus, which forms the

basis of my empirical research. After a description of my data collection and linguistic method of

analysis, the final main section will explain the findings of my empirical research in detail. There will

then follow a brief conclusion in order to draw the chapter’s key points together.

Theories of community

For David Cohen (1985) the idea of a community is dialectic and relational one. According to Cohen,

the way the concept is used suggests two related phenomena, firstly that members of a given group

have something in common with each other and secondly that this commonality distinguishes then

from members of other groups (1985: 12). To be sure, the simple implication here is that community

implies both similarity and difference. If then, as proposed, community is about inside and outside,

then the essence of a community may be found at its boundary – the space of separation of self

from (O)ther, us from them. These spaces are not necessarily real (geographical, linguistic, ethnic),

but they exist in the minds of people. Anderson (1983) proposed the concept of ‘imagined

communities’ to describe groups of people whose membership did not depend upon physical

proximity. In any national community, Anderson argues, an individual member will only meet a tiny

fraction of a population in their compatriots, and yet the community exists and coalesces around a

national collective identity. Though oriented towards national identity, Anderson’s theory is also

applicable to other communities – sub and supra national - or even unbounded by geography

(Delanty: 2009).

Community as explained by Bauman is defined and constituted in social action (Delanty:

2009). Similarly, for Cohen, a community is where people acquire culture in order to be social. This

culture may be experienced differently: “people attach their own meanings to such prescriptions

and proscriptions. In this respect they are less rules of society that its symbols” (1985: 16). People

learn to be social by acquiring the requisite symbols that allows them to be social and be part of a

given community (ibid.: 16-17). This contention though appears to ignore power relations of those

inside and outside the community. It is the existing community that has a certain level of control

over whether a potential member has (or has the chance to acquire) the ‘symbolic tools’ in order to

be social. If we think of the issue of immigration and integration policies, some potential members of

a community are seen as already possessing these symbols, others are denied. This denial of

symbolic culture is evident discursively at the level of the Argus, the local newspaper in Brighton.

Communities and their boundaries are symbolic then, not structural. They can mean

different things to different people; indeed, it is because this space allows for multiple

interpretations that a common set of symbols works to create a sustainable community. “They are

effective because they are imprecise” (Cohen, 1985: 21). As Cohen notes thought boundaries are

symbolic because of the meaning(s) given to these boundaries by those on both the inside and the

outside. One such symbolic resource to readers of the Argus newspaper might be ‘Brighton’ and it is

a concept through which the (imagined) community is reinforced.

The post-modern condition is, according to David Harvey, typified by a “collaps(ing) of

spatial barriers” which heightens the significance of space (Harvey 1990: 286). This has been brought

about by a compression of time and space facilitated primarily through technology, but also because

of increased movement of people around the world. The legitimacy and hegemonic nature of

traditional social groupings – nations, cities, and neighbourhoods – have been called into question.

Likewise, Charles Taylor (1994) argues that recent changes in the modern world have created the

conditions in which attempts to be recognised as one would wish are, for many reasons, now failing

and so identity, of which belonging to a community is a crucial component, has become a more

salient issue. Cohen proposes that the more the structure of a community is challenged or blurred,

the more the symbolic bases are reinforced and more strongly articulated. Reaction can be through

a political, or at least politicised, assertion of the boundary (Cohen 1985: 45). For Richard Sennett

(following Delanty 2009) the ‘we’ is a protective strategy against the pressures of modern capitalism

and the desire for a community is, at base, a defensive one. This is complemented by Bauman’s

assertion that communities defend themselves from outside influences (capitalism, immigration) by

“digging cultural trenches” (Delanty: 91). If challenged further, a community a may reach what its

members believe is an existential fork in the road, or as Cohen terms this, the “to be or not to be”

moment (1985: 104). It is then that a community may choose to fight back. This can be seen with the

UK government’s reaction to the spike in the number of people applying for asylum in the UK during

the last Labour government. Such people were denied access to the cultural symbols (work) to state

benefits) and as such were ‘in our space’ but not ‘of us’. And, following Cohen, full-time employment

and payment of taxes within the UK is such a resource which “during a period of intensive change,

social identity can be stabilised” (1985: 103).

Cities and urban spaces are such areas where such intensive change may take place and

where it may be most strongly experienced. Cities, Bauman posits, go hand in hand with social

change. Because of the density of population in cities, there is a concomitant concentration of needs

which necessitate the asking of questions that would not arise elsewhere (Bauman: 2003).

Moreover, for those who live in the city and rarely leave it “it is inside the city they inhabit that the

battle for survival and a decent place in the world is launched” (2003: 17). With such a battle for

survival, that includes challenges to a community’s legitimacy from above, below and beyond, it

becomes clear that the idea of a city is in itself a symbolic resource to the community through which

community identity is reinforced.

The local context:

Brighton and Sussex

The city of Brighton and Hove has an estimated population of 256,300. The city forms the major part

of the Brighton/Littlehampton/Worthing conurbation on the south coast of the UK. This urban area

has 480,000 inhabitants and is the 12th largest urban area in the UK. The city has, for a long time,

been a major tourist destination, especially for visitors from London and the south east of England.

In terms of ethnicity, an estimated 227,000 of the total population are white, of which

15,700 are either white non-British or white non-Irish. The total non-white population is 29,300

(11.43%). This ethnic diversity is comparable to other British cities such as Leeds and Bristol but

places Brighton and Hove behind others such as Leicester and Birmingham.

Ethnicity Population Percentage

White, white-British, white Irish 211,300 82.44%

White Other 15,700 6.12%

Mixed 5,700 2.22%

Asian or British Asian 12,500 4.87%

Black or black-British 5,900 2.30%

Chinese or Other 5,100 1.98%

All 256,300 100.00%

Table 1: Population of Brighton and Hove by Ethnic Group2

Brighton and Hove has three migrant communities of note, the first is Sudanese Coptic refugees who

fled persecution by authorities in Egypt and claimed asylum in the UK in 1991. They have since

settled into the area and have established their own church and community association. The second

group, whose population has grown since the EU Enlargement in 2004, is Central and Eastern

European migrants, primarily from Poland. They have opened Polish food shops and cafes, boosted

the attendance of catholic churches and like the Sudanese before them, have a community

organisation. Thirdly, Brighton and Hove City council took part in the Gateway Protection

Programme – a joint agreement between the UK border agency and the UNHCR to resettle a quota

of refugees. In 2006 seventy-nine Ethiopian refugees, who had previously been in a refugee camp in

Nairobi, were given housing in Brighton and Hove. Their entry, settlement and integration was

helped through free English language classes, assistance from both statutory bodies (PCT, local

council) and further support via the Refugee Mentoring Scheme. However, according to a report,

despite this assistance the new migrants found it difficult initially to gain employment and English

language skills (Collyer and de Guerre: 2007).

Although Brighton and Hove is not a designated asylum dispersal area3, the council and

primary care trust together does provide assistance to a small number of asylum seekers whose

2 Table adapted from statistics from the Office of National Statistics (2009)

claims have been rejected as well a number of young unaccompanied asylum seekers. These are

housed in special hostels or in local hotels, something that the Argus reported on a lot during the

period of analysis for this paper. Brighton is also close to Gatwick, where there is a holding centre for

asylum seekers, and to Lunar House in Croydon – a major national registration centre for asylum

applications managed by the UK Borders Agency – and there is a similar trend in reporting of asylum

issues in the Argus from these two proximate locations.

The city’s authorities pride themselves and advertise Brighton and Hove as a diverse city

primarily because of its large gay population but also as an area of ethnic diversity. The first item on

Brighton and Hove City Council’s corporate plan for 2011-2015 list is to “tackle inequality” and this

includes a commitment to supports organisations and communities in order to “appreciate and

value the diversity of people’s backgrounds” (Brighton and Hove City Council: 2011). Likewise, the

city’s strategic partnership plan notes that it is: “committed to promoting equality and cohesion,

supporting social inclusion and preventing discrimination” (Brighton and Hove Strategic Partnership:

2010).

The Brighton Argus

The Argus is the main local newspaper available in Brighton and Hove and it is also sold throughout

the county of Sussex. It is printed six days a week and has a current circulation of 24,949 with a

population penetration of 8.8% (Newspaper Society, 2011).4 Estimated readership throughout the

area is approximately 63,000 and the total population of the circulation area is 694,274 (JICREG,

2011). Circulation has declined in recent years and in 2005 was recorded at 38,361 (Ponsford, 2005).

The Argus also has a website, with an active comments section especially in relation to sports. The

website has 416,969 unique browsers per month (JICREG, 2011).

In 2004, the paper was relaunched and aimed at a more middle-class higher-income readers

– in the style of the Daily Mail – and a lot of the community news was dropped from the publication

(Ponsford, 2005) although the news still follow as “tabloid-style” agenda with a focus (Greenslade,

2010). This rebranding failed to stem the decline in sales and this led to the paper being reduced

from two evening editions (one for Brighton and Hove and another for the wider county) to one

daily morning edition (McNally, 2008). Part of the reason for this move and for the declining sales

may be that throughout the 2000s, the paper had to deal with increased competition from

3 Under the 1999 Asylum and Immigration Act, the British government set out a number of dispersal areas for

asylum applicants awaiting a decision. The primary aim was to spread the cost and housing pressures new migrants throughout the country rather than allow applicants to coalesce in larger, more affluent urban areas, primarily London. The National Asylum Support Service (NASS) was established to manage the dispersals. 4 Figure was calculated by was aggregating data for the circulation areas within Brighton and Hove City limits

and then finding an average: Brighton (8.03%), Hove (8.78%), Woodingdean (11.59%), Rottingdean (9.34%), Saltdean (6.95%) and Shoreham and Portslade (8.12), (Newspaper Society, 2011)

freesheets such as the London evening standard and Metro, which is available on buses and at other

transport points. Despite reduced readership, Greenslade contends that the Argus still plays an

active and key public-service role (Greenslade, 2010)

Indeed, the paper constructs itself as very much an active, vital member within the

community of Brighton, and more widely, the county of Sussex. Its editorial stance is one of

defender of Brighton’s interests and representative of its localised readership. The paper acts not

just as a gatekeeper of knowledge but also as a gatekeeper of the local community of Brighton and

Sussex. Thus, at times the paper highlights its activity in bringing criminals, and in this case migrants,

to justice, whilst in other cases, the Argus represents itself as welcoming new migrants or protecting

them from injustices. Thus, the paper plays a crucial role in setting the agenda in Brighton on

questions of immigration.

Data and Methodology

Until relatively recently, discourses have been analysed quantitatively through a number of methods

such as content analysis, frame analysis, corpus linguistics. However, with the linguistic turn in social

and political sciences, scholars have become more aware of the need to pay attention to the context

surrounding a discourse (Wodak: 2008), be this on a macro-level in terms of longer social and

historical trends or on a smaller-scale, for example the environment, or nature, in which a interview

is conducted (Krzyżanowski: 2008). This knowledge of the wider context is best obtained through

qualitative approaches to discourse analysis.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical discourse analysis is interested in issues of ideology, power relations, hierarchy. As such CDA

is used by scholars to investigate varied fields such as gender issues (Wagner and Wodak: 2006)

political discourse (Reisigl and Wodak: 2001), political and institutional communication

(Krzyżanowski: 2010) media discourses (van Dijk, 1991; Richardson, 2009). Although critics of CDA,

and integration of migrants Blommeart and Vershueren, (1998). At the core of the CDA is the tenet

that discursive practices are specific forms of social practice (Reisigl and Wodak: 2000; Van Dijk:

1987; Fairclough and Wodak: 1997). As is to be expected, there are a number of approaches to

critical discourse analysis, for example: the socio-cognitive approach (van Dijk: 1983), multi modality

and semiotics (van Leuven and Kress, 2001), Uta Quastohff’s work on prejudices (1978) and the

Discourse Historical Approach (Reisigl and Wodak: 2000).5 Elements of two of these approaches –

the socio-cognitive and discourse historical approach – will be employed in my analysis and these

are explained in detail below.

The first - the socio-cognitive approach - has been forwarded most prolifically by Teun van

Dijk (1984). In this theory, cognition plays a vital role in connecting society and discourse. In short,

racism is learnt through talk and text (Van Dijk, 2002: 36). Over time, our memories “shape our

perception and comprehension of discursive practices and also imply stereotypes and prejudices, if

such mental models become rigid.” (Wodak and Busch, 2004: 110). These ‘racist’ stereotypes and

mental models explain how and why people act discriminatorily (Van Dijk: 2000). This approach’s

use in analysing media texts is exemplified by van Dijk’s contention that the power of the media is

discursive and symbolic. The media is the main source of people’s knowledge of events and in

collaboration with politicians, professionals and academics, the media controls public discourse. This

state of affairs can be termed the power of “elite racism”. Throughout his work, van Dijk has created

and utilises a conceptual tool known as the ideological square which dominates discourses on ethnic

minorities as Richardson notes: This ideological square is characterised by a Positive Self-

Presentation and a simultaneous Negative Other-Presentation and is observable across all linguistic

dimensions of text (Richardson, 2004: 55). As it will become clear in the following section this

strategy plays a crucial part in the discursive construction of Brighton as a community within the

Argus.

The second method (and its authors contend that it is a method rather than a theory) is the

Discourse Historical Approach (hereafter, DHA) as forwarded by Reisigl and Wodak (2000). The DHA

starts from the point of view that discourses are constitutive of and constituted by social practices

and situations, institutional frames and social structures (2000: 36). Therefore, in order to gain a

more complete picture, DHA practitioners should study a certain discourse by employing not just

linguistic, but also historical, political and social, dimensions. The approach than therefore be said to

be interdisciplinary and multi-methodological. From here it becomes obvious that one of the

advantages in using the DHA to analyse the Argus’ constructions of the local community and its

boundaries is the ability to analyse long-term, diachronic change and by taking into account the

dynamics of local, national and supranational socio-political, cultural and economic contexts, for

example general and local elections, European Union enlargement and the changing immigration

legislation landscape.

5 For more extensive explanations of different approaches to CDA, see Reisigl and Wodak (2000) pp. 20-29

Wodak and Busch (2004) pp. 109-122, Krzyżanowski and Wodak (2009) and Krzyżanowski (2010), Richardson (2009)

According to Wodak and Reisigl, the DHA calls for a three-dimensional analysis whereby 1)

contents and topics, 2) strategies and 3) linguistic means and realisations are investigated (2000: 44).

Within this, five key linguistic strategies that can be analysed: referential/nomination, predication,

argumentation, perspectivisation/framing and intensification/mitigation (p.44)

For the analysis of the content of articles from the Argus, I am interested in two strategies.

The first is a Van Dijkian concentration on negative other/positive self representations. Within this, I

will show how predication and nomination strategies (taken from the DHA) are employed to

construct the local community as generally ‘good’ and external bodies (migrants) and institutions

(national government) as (potentially) threatening and/or dangerous and thus something to exclude

from the community. I will also highlight certain argumentation strategies used to represent the

community as victim of immigrants’ behaviour rather than as the victimiser. Later, I will also look at

perspectivisation when analysing how the Argus constructs itself as within the community.

Data

Despite new technologies changing habits of media consumption, newspapers are still a source of

news for many. Newspapers are ubiquitous, and hold considerable social and political influence.

From this, it can be stated that newspapers are valuable sources for qualitative discourse analysis

because they “very much reflect the social mainstream” (Mautner: 2008).

The articles analysed for this paper were taken from the searchable archive of the Brighton

Argus website. The calendar month of April 1st-31st was taken as my sample period within thirteen

years 1999-2011 and articles were found using the following keywords: refugee(s), asylum seeker(s),

migrant(s), immigrant(s), migration immigration, trafficking, human traffic and sex traffic. My final

sample consisted of seventy-seven articles, the yearly breakdown of which is detailed in table 1

below.

Year No. of Articles

1999 2

2000 6

2001 9

2002 1

2003 9

2004 6

2005 7

2006 4

Analysis:6

There were two key strands to the findings of the qualitative analysis of the articles which will be

discussed below. The first is how over time the Argus constructs the local community as a victim of

both national government and of transgressions by migrants, be they real (crime) and/or symbolic

(merely entering the local community). Further to this, the Argus constructs the community of

Brighton as sometimes welcoming migrants but at other times throughout the sample period

rejecting migrants when they are conceived of as threatening shared community spaces,

commodities and resources.

Discursive constructions of community in The Argus

The construction of community is done in three distinct ways. Firstly, Brighton, and more often,

Sussex is reported as being under threat from migration.

Fears grew today that Worthing could be the target for hundreds of asylum

seekers in the next few months

12th April 2000 (Argus: 2000a)

In this excerpt about Worthing, in the west of the south-coast conurbation, firstly there the

unattributed noun ‘fears’ followed by the verb ‘grew’. Through this agent deletion, it is not stated

who is scared so readers are possibly left with the impression that it is virtually every resident of

Worthing that is scared. Secondarily, we can point to the use of the militaronym ‘target’. This use of

a war metaphor conjures up images of asylum seekers at the very least, an attacking force. Thus, the

threat has been located as being the town of Worthing. Finally, asylum seekers are constructed as an

active agent, which actually goes against the reality that it is the national government that decides

on dispersal areas and thus, asylum seekers have very little choice as to where they are

accommodated.

6 For reasons of space complete articles have not been reprinted in this section. Paragraphs that are not

adjacent are analysed, this is denoted by ‘...’.

2007 10

2008 11

2009 5

2010 6

2011 1

Total (13 Yrs) 77

Table 2: Breakdown of Sample

Frequently, when reporting on events in which migrants are involved, the Argus quotes local

members of parliament and local councillors. As well as being figures of authority, a tactic identified

by Van Dijk (2000) they are also representative figures by dint of being democratically elected. They

therefore stand for their community are expected to represent their concerns.

In the next example about Arun, the local authority to the west of Brighton, including

Littlehampton, is taken from an article just a day after the excerpt above, this quoting pattern is

combined again with the creation of refugees/asylum seekers as a threat:

Refugee crisis blows budget

Councillors have blamed an influx of asylum seekers for an overspend of

£18,500 in their housing budget.

They are furious that taxpayers’ cash in Arun is being spent on asylum seekers

and families coming down from London who claim they are homeless...

...Borough councils in London have been advising homeless people to travel to

the county to seek accommodation and there has also been a rise in the

number of families in Arun who were deemed to be internationally homeless

and asylum seekers.

Councillor Richard Dickinson, chairman of housing and community services

committee said: “It isn’t fair for the rest of the Arun ratepayers to have this

extra expense.

“Asylum seekers are an area of concern across the south coast. It was mainly in

the Kent and Dover area to start with but now it has spilled over and is causing

a problem in Arun.

13 April 2000 (Argus: 2000b)

In the headline the threat of refugees is intensified through the use of the collocate ‘crisis’. Taken

together the headline and the first two paragraphs the conceptual muddling of the actionyms

‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’, a frequent theme throughout the Argus’ reporting of migrant issues.

In paragraph two, Arun is located as the community threatened or in danger, readers are also made

aware in paragraphs two and three that the cause of the problem originated in London. Thus,

symbolic borders are created between the sending and receiving regions. In the final paragraph, a

quote from a local politician, the water metaphor ‘spilled over’ is used to describe the problem of

asylum of seekers. The use of water metaphors is very common in describing migration (Hart: 2010).

Liquids are difficult to manage and keep control of.

The next article in this section reports on Diego Garcian nationals who have settled in the

Sussex area.

Benefits dating back to October are to be paid to hundreds of refugees already

living in Sussex and thousands more poised to be come to Britain.

27 April 2005 (Argus: 2005b)

Here, Sussex is the location of ‘hundreds‘ of refugees taking benefits – a shared public resource. But

more interesting is the adverb ‘poised’ which implies that others are just about to enter or even

invade the country.

Even when a story is national, the issue is positioned as having local relevance. Over time

this contributes to the construction of Sussex and Brighton as under siege from outsiders. For

example:

...this is after he found nine of them (asylum seekers)7 hidden in his lorry. Peter

Beal, of Horsham could not believe it when he opened the back of his lorry in

Belgium and found four men, a woman and a baby inside.

After ordering them to get out he travelled on, but later the same day he

checked again and found two men. Mr Beal decided to make one last check in

the passport queue for Dover and then spotted another man looking up at

him.....

April 17 2000 (Argus: 2000c)

Thus, the incident is made relevant by constructing the victim as being ‘of Horsham’ even though he

discovered the ‘them’ in Belgium. There is a further attempt to locate the threat closer to home by

using ‘Dover’ although we learn that the final check was made not in the UK but whilst waiting to

board a ferry to the UK. Here, the preposition ‘for’ rather than, for example ‘in’ becomes vital.

7 My brackets. ‘Asylum seekers’ has been used because that is how the subjects were described in the

preceding paragraph

The second facet of Brighton (and Sussex) as an imagined community (under threat), is its

construction as a victim of national government on issues of migration. This strategy serves to help

inculcate a perception of the community as sub-national in nature and is constructed in opposition

to national structures and institutions. The following article refers to the use of local hotels as save-

havens for refugees from Kosovo:

Some Sussex towns, like Eastbourne and Hastings, already house hundreds

who have escaped other humanitarian crises around the world.

Mr Waterson said: “My fear is that ministers will impose refugees without

taking into account the fact that councils cannot cope with extra pressures.”

15 April 1999 (Argus: 1999)8

In this article, the local MP is pre-empting a decision from the national government. By employing

the strong verb ‘impose’, the potential decision becomes something that cannot be contested by

‘local councils’. This is intensified with the strong modal ‘will’ which makes the risk certain.

By way of a further example, the following is the first paragraph from an article on Sussex as

an entry point for trafficked children:

Tory MPs have blamed the Government’s “soft touch” approach to asylum

seekers for the West Sussex child trafficking scandal.

26 April 2001 (Argus: 2001)

The responsibility of the problem is placed at the feet of the national government. The use of a

decontextualised quote, initially unsourced but later attributed to a local MP, provides the basis of

the argument for what is later termed a ‘scandal’. Towards the end of the sentence, the author of

the article the issue at hand is retroactively located the issue at hand as within the local community

by using the deontic toponym ‘West Sussex’.

A similar strategy is employed and visible in the article below about local reactions the

housing of asylum seekers in Saltdean in the West of Brighton:

8 Eastbourne and Hastings are both large towns in East Sussex.

The Home office is largely to blame for causing trouble in Saltdean, through

the sloppy way it dealt with the affair.

8 April 2003 (Argus: 2003b)

Again, a national governmental body, in this case the Home Office, responsible for dispersal of

asylum seekers is the active agent that has brought trouble to the community. The deductive

meaning of this sentence is that, had the Home Office dealt with the ‘affair’ better, there might not

have been trouble in the local community. The construction of the Home Office as the victimiser

benefits representations of the community in two ways. Firstly, it is the victim of external action, and

secondly, responsibility for any trouble comes from external bodies.

The third and final method that The Argus employs to construct a community based on the

idea of Brighton, or more often, Sussex is the reporting of positive things done by the community and

its institutions. Throughout the articles there are two clear ways in which the community positively

constructed and very broadly (and with a number of exceptions) there is a chronological pattern in

the three strategies that move towards an opening up of the community. In earlier articles, the

community protects itself against threats, later on, there is a shift of emphasis towards the

community rescuing and protecting migrants who are victims and at the same time the community is

constructed as one that welcomes and helps migrants to integrate into the community.

As an example of the first stage, the following excerpts all come from articles in April 2003

and relate to the reversal of a national government’s decision to use a hotel in Saltdean to

temporarily house asylum seekers who were awaiting applications. The original decision to locate

the asylum seekers in the area led to a local protest movement as well as action by city councillors

and the local MP. Here the community is constructed as defending itself. In the first two examples,

the use of numbers and quantifiers to indicate the homogeneity of feeling amongst residents that

the outcome was, a) for the good of the community and b) welcomed by a majority. Consider:

Saltdean Residents Action Group was set up specifically to fight the plans.

Group member Greg Bishop, of Saltdean Vale, said: I think everyone will be

pleased to hear this announcement.

8 April 2003 (Argus: 2003a)

There are two points of note. Firstly there is the name of the action group which appears to

represent, implicitly, all residents of Saltdean. The representative nature of such a group is further

advanced, and made explicit by the use of ‘everyone’ plus the strong modal ‘will’ in the quote from a

member of the group. Moving on, the article below was published in the subsequent day’s edition:

The issue has raged in the suburb of Brighton for six months. Residents feared

an influx of up to 600 refugees would have had a huge impact on facilities and

house prices. Many staged protests...

The majority of residents of Saltdean, however, will be breathing a sigh of

relief...

9 April 2003 (Argus: 2003c)

In the first paragraph we learn of the ‘fears’ that refugees will impact upon facilities currently used

and shared only by those already inside the community, there is the secondary effect on house

prices which can be seen as both an effect on individual members of the community (those who are

potential sellers) and collectively by ‘devaluing’ their shared space. In reaction this is, imprecise

quantifier ‘many’ is employed to describe the protests.

Later in the article, the views of those defending the (potential) asylum seekers are

reported, this is disregarded by the conjunctive use of ‘however’, a movement further reinforced by

the quantifying noun ‘majority’ and the definite article preceding it. The term majority is used

although this quantifier is not sourced and there is no indication of any polls taken to discern the

truth of this statement.

In the subsequent passages taken from the article, numbers are employed twice to again

highlight the popularity of the protests and their representative nature.

...More than 100 people attended a meeting on the issue. Residents expressed

concern that the settlement could be “overwhelmed”....

...More than 250 people still took to the streets to oppose the proposals

9 April 2003 (Argus: 2003c)

In the same article, this emphasis of the majority position and the use of numbers works in

conjunction with the passage below to imply the small scale of voices defending the asylum seekers.

But other households urged protesters to put themselves in the asylum-

seekers’ shoes.

9 April 2003 (Argus: 2003c)

Here, those against the ‘majority’ are reduced to individual and inanimate ‘households’.

Finally, in an editorial comment from the day before, the strategy of argumentum ad

misericordiam9 is employed to discursively construct the community positively as not-racist but

merely practical. Again, the size of the community is downplayed – ‘a small suburb’ - to highlight its

vulnerability to incoming populations.

While some of the opposition was racist in nature, more of it was because of a

genuine concern that a small suburb like Saltdean would find it hard to cope

with an influx of up to 600 people at one time.

April 8 2003 (Argus: 2000b)

Later in the data, there is a shift in the way that The Argus portrays the community away from

protecting itself to protecting others, including migrants that are located as ‘within’ the community.

In April 2005 The Argus ran an article about a “Freedom march” supporting Omar Deghayes, a local

resident held at Guantanamo Bay:

Organised by the Save Omar campaign, the event is designed to draw attention

to the plight of Mr Deghayes, a 35-year-old father from Saltdean, who has

been held without charge in Guantanamo Bay’s Camp Delta for nearly three

years...

Save Omar activist Jackie Chase said: “This march will put further pressure on

the British government to seek justice for Omar. It is only thanks to such

pressure in the past that it finally agreed to present Omar’s family’s concerns

about his treatment to US officials.”

5 April 2005 (Argus: 2005a)

In the first paragraph, it is clear that Omar Deghayes, who has residency but not British citizenship, is

constructed as within the local community. By selecting to use ‘from’ rather than, for example ‘who

9 This argumentation strategy appeals, unjustifiably, for empathy for (potential) crises or difficulties (Reisigl

and Wodak, 2001: 72)

lives’, Saltdean becomes his (unchangeable) origin rather than merely where he lives. The Argus uses

a quote one of Mr Deghayes’ supporters. The positive activity of the local protest group in

supporting and campaigning on behalf of Mr Deghayes is foregrounded in the phrase ‘it is only

thanks to

By way of a further example, throughout April 2007, there were six separate articles in The

Argus that reported on Mohammed Samad, an asylum seeker living in the area, and his battle

against extradition. Mr Samad, lived in Henfield a village approximately 20kms north-west of

Brighton. The following sentence was repeated in three of the articles (11th, 19th and 20th April):

He has paid his taxes in full and become a hugely popular member of the

community and a key player for Henfield Cricket Club.

11 April 2007 (Argus 2007)

Here, the subject is presented very much as part of the community in three ways. Initially, there is

notification that he pays his taxes fully, something that all good citizens and community members

are expected to do. It can also be deduced from this statement that non-payment of taxes would

somehow reduce his popularity or exclude him from membership of the community. Subsequently,

in the second clause of the sentence, Mr Samad’s community membership is constructed by the use

of an intensifying adverb, ‘hugely’, to describe his status as a ‘popular member’. This importance and

his membership of the community is then enhanced by reference to his organised participation in a

symbolic, almost ritualised activity of local cricket. Quite often, especially on summer weekends,

local life can revolve around the cricket field and the clubhouse and so reference to this works to

underpin his status and importance in the community. This sentence was repeated twice more in

articles on 19th and 20th April and through this repetition readers could have been left in no doubt

that Mr Samad was located within the community positively.

In 2008 there appears to be a further shift as well as defending victims, the community is

also now constructed as welcomes migrants and helps them to integrate. In a comment piece from

2008, the success of Arun council in integrating migrant workers is praised:

Many organisations within the district have worked tirelessly in this time to

help migrants integrate into our community, with positive effects....

A major element of that work has been to consult with new residents from

Portugal, Poland, Latvia and Lithuania in order to understand their issues and

needs.

17 April 2008 (Argus: 2008)

And again consider:

Arun is home to almost 150,000 people of different backgrounds, beliefs and

ages.

It prides itself on being a place that welcomes and readily integrates

newcomers, where every individual has access to the means of achieving a

good quality of life and feels and strong sense of belonging.

17 April 2008 (Dendle 2008)

Within these two paragraphs, the area of Arun is constructed as multi-cultural, diverse and open

despite the fact that 94.4% of the population are white (Office of National Statistics: 2009).

Thus, these positive representations of the community, as indicated above, over time thus

complete Van Dijk’s positive in-group/negative out-group derogation model. Readers, it could be

argued, are left with the image of the community as under threat from unwanted migrants and

hampered by national decisions. And yet, at the same time, they can still conceive of Brighton and

Hove (and Sussex) as a welcoming, open city.

Conclusions

Before concluding this chapter it is worth recapitulating the three main strategies identified in the

above analysis of discursive construction of urban area of Brighton as a community. Firstly, it was

shown how Brighton was reported as being under threat from immigration. Secondly, the sense of

community was enhanced by it being the victim of national decisions and finally, Brighton and

Sussex were represented positively as welcoming and/or protecting migrants that were deemed to

possess the symbolic tools of the community. Discursively these three strategies through have been

realised through nomination and predication as well as mitigation and intensification.

These strategies have been employed at different periods throughout the duration of the

sample and appear to mirror changes in the social and political spheres, both locally and nationally.

The more exclusionary strategies accompanied the first challenges to communities brought by

higher levels of immigration (the first and second strategy). But this changed to a more outward

looking and inclusive view that reflected not only the UK government’s but also the international

community’s move towards an outward rhetoric of responsibility for refugees and finally, this too

has made way for integration and acceptance of migration post-EU enlargement (the third strategy).

This final area of the findings seems to particularly complement Gerard Delanty’s contention (cf.

above) that community is not merely about construction of borders but it is also about a sense of

self-identity and belonging, or what can maybe be termed positive identity markers: ‘I am a member

of a good community’ (cf. Jones and Krzyżanowski: 2008 and Krzyżanowski 2010 for discursive

constructions of belonging).

In revisiting the original hypothesis of the paper, it appears clear from the analysis contained in

this chapter that the Argus serves to give its readers a positive self image of the geographically-

grounded urban community that they live in and that this is done by creating the community in

juxtaposition to outsiders, in this case, migrants. That this is the case should not be suprising if the

theoretical foundations of this chapter are taken as valid. Firstly, acquisition and possession of

cultural symbols are vital to becoming and accepted member of a community. Thus, being a ‘tax-

payer’ is symbolic requirement for being a full member of society in the UK. Similarly, it is important

to be ‘from’ the local area rather than being a visitor, or immigrant, to it.

Secondly, per Harvey and Cohen, our post-modern world is changing the way we interact and

how we experience our space and time. Immigration is just one, albeit seemingly influential, facet of

the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and so, again, it is perhaps not unsurprising that it

is a salient part of current constructions of group identity. Furthermore, migration to, and within,

Western Europe is likely to not only continue, but also to increase in the coming years and the

effects will be most strongly felt in cities to where migrants naturally are drawn due to employment

opportunities and established migrant networks and so cities (and countries), as communities, will

continue to be challenged. There appears a real need then for cities to adapt accordingly so that all

of its residents feel a sense of belonging.

This chapter has touched only a few choice areas of the discursive construction of

communities. And there are a number of ways in which later research could progress. My doctoral

research will focus on the discourse of integration of migrants into the United Kingdom. Other

possibilities include investigating whether an urban community such as Brighton is discursively

constructed in opposition to other groups, not just migrants – such as football teams, national

government and the EU. It would also be of some worth researching whether local newspapers from

other areas in the UK, or indeed internationally, similarly create a positive self image of the local

community and who or what this is in juxtaposition to. Previous research has shown that

representations of migrants in, for example, London newspapers, have been generally more positive

than national newspapers (Information Centre about Asylum and Refugees: 2005). Finally, there is a

definite space in the literature for qualitative research based on interviews with migrants

themselves concerning their conception of community, citizenship and integration.

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