Analysis of lexical fields: the importance of values

The analysis continues by no longer focusing on the welcoming keywords only but also on the lexical fields used to describe this willingness to welcome. The aim here is to know more about the place values occupy in these speeches. To achieve this, a lexicometric test was realized via the Reinert method in IRaMuTeQ software. The objective here is to propose a classification of the texts according to the proximity of the lexicon that composes them. The resulting terminal classes therefore represent sets of sentences that tend to contain the same words. This analysis makes it possible to identify the main themes addressed in our previously mentioned text compilations.

Paris: staying pragmatic

In the Parisian case, the Reinert method revealed four classes of discourse, or four themes regarding reception of migrants and refugees.’ They are represented in the form of the dendrogram below. It presents the most specific terms of each theme obtained (according to the Chi2 statistics): the larger the font size and the higher the words in a column, the more representative they are of this theme.

Our four classes are divided into two branches, corresponding to two main categories: political actions to the left, and context description to the right. The analysis starts from the left of the dendrogram to the right.

Classes one and two represent the actions and concrete measures carried out in the city. More precisely, class one concerns the ‘sheltering’ [mise a I’abri] operations coordinated by the Police Prefecture to send migrants gathered in makeshift camps erected in public places to accommodation centers. From 2015 to 2018, nearly 35 sheltering operations were carried out, but the reappearance of new camps was not resolved in a sustainable manner. In addition, the term ‘sheltering’ is particularly relevant to institutional discourse. Many refugee activists and citizens’ groups prefer to speak

Figure 10.1 Main semantic fields in Parisian speeches about migrants’ receptionof ‘evacuation’ or even ‘roundups,’ in view of the number of people who did not receive accommodation after these operations, or who were taken to an administrative detention center (Centre de Retention Administrative). Using the term ‘roundup’ [ra/le] is very meaningful: in French history, it has been used to refer to the sudden and massive deportations of Jews to concentration camps during the Second World War.

Class two concerns the Centre de Premier Accueil (CPA), also known as the Humanitarian Center, which was established in November 2016 near Porte de la Chapelle and closed in the spring of 2018. This center, initially comanaged by the City of Paris and two associations, Emmaus and Utopia 56, was the embodiment of the City of Paris’ desire to welcome people, since it set up this project without the support of the State, at least initially. The aim of this center was to welcome migrants (mainly single men²) for a few days, before referring them to the appropriate social measures, depending on their administrative situation. This was the first center of its kind to be opened in France. Nearly 25,000 men passed through it during the time it was open.

Then, classes three and four represent the contextualization values. Class three offers a description of the humanitarian context: ‘misery,’ ‘unworthy,’ ‘unacceptable,’ ‘war,’ ‘camp.’ Class four corresponds to an imperative for action with plural justifications: ‘law,’ ‘responsibility,’ ‘defender,’ ‘history,’ ‘refuge,’ ‘challenge,’ and ‘humanity.’ These two classes constitute 45.5 percent of the public speeches analyzed here, which allows us to observe how important the values mobilized to describe the situation are in close relation to concrete action mechanisms: almost as much speaking time is devoted to one as the other.

However, it would be overly simple to separate here our two main categories with ‘action’ - via devices - on the one hand, and ‘speech’ - via simple context descriptions - on the other. On the contrary, it is worth emphasizing the performative dimension of language, in particular of the institutional language studied by Bourdieu. In his work Language and Symbolic Power (1991), Bourdieu underlines the fact that, when an institution speaks through its officials, the simple process of appointing an object leads to a construction of reality. Producing a speech structures the worldview of the agents who listen to it, and in return, structures the world itself when these agents consider it legitimate and therefore adhere to it. Yet the effectiveness of this institutional language cannot be understood without the very authority of the institution from which it emanates. It is thus thanks to the symbolic power vested in the spokesperson, as the representative of the institution, that the latter can produce a performative speech. This analysis of institutional language allows for a better understanding of the important place of descriptive values in the Mayor’s communications: to build a ‘welcoming city,’ Anne Hidalgo or her deputies must mobilize humanist values to describe the context in which the actions of the city are embedded - here ‘unworthy,’ ‘humanity,’ ‘respect,’ and ‘refuge.’ The next part will question how important this institutional language is in Ada Colau’s speeches.

Figure 10.2 Main semantic fields in Barcelona’s speeches about migrants’ reception

158 L. Hombert

Barcelona: for a freer voice

The same lexicometric analysis was applied to the quotes compiled for Barcelona’s case, and the results are as follows:

The dendrogram above shows five thematic classes. Class five is separate, concerning migrants rescued in the Mediterranean and more specifically the NGO Proactiva Open Arms. Class four represents the overall humanitarian situation - ‘flee,’ ‘conflict,’ ‘drama,’ ‘humanitarian,’ ‘emergency,’ while classes one, two, and three concern the political sphere. More precisely, class three corresponds to political denunciation - ‘crisis,’ ‘situation,’ ‘necessary,’ ‘ELI.’ Then, classes one and two are the political responses: class one concerns the global political system - ‘political,’ ‘subject,’ ‘asylum,’ ‘European,’ ‘State,’ - and class two concerns the justifications for political action -‘refuge,’ ‘welcoming,’ ‘solidarity,’ ‘obligation,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘racism,’ and ‘human right.’

This lexicometric analysis confirms the first leads identified by the occurrence analysis. Here the classes of this dendrogram represent much more general themes than in the Parisian case. Apart from class five and the terms ‘Barcelona’ or ‘Generalität,’⁵ nothing links the corpus to a specifically Barcelonaese or even Spanish situation, while half of the thematic classes in Paris concerned the local context. The values mobilized by the Mayor of Barcelona contain a more global, universal dimension, and they are also more diffused in each class. Class three remain the most substantial. Through the significant mobilization of references to ‘Europe,’ Ada Colau and her team’s speeches place the question of welcoming people within a broader issue: Europe’s values. They strongly underline the opposition between, on the one hand, respect for human rights and solidarity, and on the other hand, the EU’s inaction accompanied by the rise of xenophobia and nationalism. This argumentative rhetoric is very rarely present in Paris’ municipal team’s statements. However, these two metropolises are largely united in the mobilization of the humanist register, making extensive use of the terms ‘humanity,’ ‘humane,’ ‘solidarity,’ and insisting on the duty to ‘welcome’ and to be a ‘refuge.’