Cover not available

Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics: Online-First Articles

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

“A closed border is a compassionate border”

A critical analysis of U.S. immigration reform discourse

ORCiD logo with link | Indiana University South Bend
Published online: 17 October 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.25012.ger
Abstract
Immigration is one of the most contentious issues of our time. Prior research about immigration reform discourse in Western Europe and the United States has focused primarily on the important role that populist rhetoric has played in recent years. The rise of the populist radical right has led to a shift in what is sayable and has normalized explicitly racist and xenophobic statements that were formerly taboo. President Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, in particular, has received a lot of scholarly attention. This article contributes to this scholarly discourse by focusing on congressional debates about immigration. More specifically, this article is interested in understanding how the Republican party appealed to voters that were not swayed by Trump’s populist rhetoric and argues that their emphasis on traditional values and compassionate conservatism was a particularly important rhetorical strategy.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Method
  • 4.Family values and “fake families”
  • 5.Victims worthy or protection
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
References (39)
References
Abromeit, John. 2017. “A Critical Review of Recent Literature on Populism.” Politics and Governance 5 (4): 177–186. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Akkerman, Tjitske. 2015. “Immigration Policy and Electoral Competition in Western Europe.” Party Politics 21 (1): 54–67. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carney, Riley, and Ryan Enos. 2017. “Conservatism and Fairness in Contemporary Politics: Unpacking the Psychological Underpinnings of Modern Racism.” Working Paper. Harvard University. [URL]
Culda, Gabriela, Adrian Opre, and Alexandra Dobrin. 2018. “Victim Blaming by Women and Men Who Believe the World Is a Just Place.” Cognition, Brain, Behavior. An Interdisciplinary Journal 22 (2): 99–110. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dancygier, Rafaela. 2020. “Another Progressive’s Dilemma: Immigration, the Radical Right and Threats to Gender Equality.” Daedalus 149 (1): 56–71. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
de Vreese, Claes, Frank Esser, Toril Aalberg, Carsten Reinemann and James Stanyer. 2018. “Populism as an Expression of Political Communication Content and Style: A New Perspective.” The International Journal of Press/Politics 23 (4): 423–438. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1995. Critical Discourse Analysis: The Critical Study of Language. Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Pantheon Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Friedman, Hershey, Svetlana Vlady, and Ngoc Cindy Pham. 2024. “Overcoming Cognitive Biases: The Key to Reducing Bigotry and Victimization.” North East Journal of Legal Studies 44 (5). Available at: [URL]
Giani, Marco, and Pierre-Guillaume Méon. 2021. “Global Racist Contagion Following Donald Trump’s Election.” British Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 1332–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hahl, Oliver, Minjae Kim, and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan. 2018. “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy.” American Sociological Review 83 (1): 1–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hanna, Rudee Colleen. 2023. “How Gender and Victim Blame Impact the Identification of Human Trafficking Victims.” PhD diss., Walden University. 148631. [URL]
Harsin, Jayson. 2024. “Post-truth Politics and Epistemic Populism: About (Dis-)Trusted Presentation and Communication of Facts, Not False Information.” In Post-Truth Populism, edited by Saul Newman, and Maximilian Conrad. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hellström, Anders. 2021. “How Anti-Immigration Views Were Articulated in Sweden during and after 2015.” MIM Working Paper Series 21 (2). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jagers, Jan, and Stefaan Walgrave. 2007. “Populism as Political Communication Style: An Empirical Study of Political Parties’ Discourse in Belgium.” European Journal of Political Research 461: 319–345. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
James, Toby. 2021. “The Effects of Donald Trump.” Policy Studies 42 (5–6): 755–769. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał. 2020. “Discursive Shifts and the Normalisation of Racism: Imaginaries of Immigration, Moral Panics and the Discourse of Contemporary Rightwing Populism.” Social Semiotics 30 (4): 503–527. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Krzyżanowski, Michał, and Natalia Krzyżanowska. 2024. “Conceptual Flipsiding in/and Illiberal Imagination: Towards a Discourse-Conceptual Analysis.” The Journal of Illiberalism Studies. 4 (2): 33–46. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lerner, Melvin. 1980. The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Plenum. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moffitt, Benjamin. 2016. The Global Rise of Populism: Performance, Political Style, and Representation. Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser. 2017. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Müller, Karsten, and Carlo Schwarz. 2020. “From Hashtag to Hate Crime: Twitter and Anti-Minority Sentiment.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15 (3): 270–312. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Newman, Benjamin, Jennifer L. Merolla, Sono Shah, Danielle Casarez Lemi, Loren Collingwood, and Karthick Ramakrishnan. 2021. “The Trump Effect: An Experimental Investigation of the Emboldening Effect of Racially Inflammatory Elite Communication.” British Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 1138–59. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peterie, Michelle. 2017. “Docility and Desert: Government Discourses of Compassion in Australia’s Asylum Seeker Debate.” Journal of Sociology 53 (2): 351–366. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sahar, Gail. 2023. Blame and Political Attitudes: The Psychology of America’s Culture War. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schmidt-Catran, Alexander, and Christian Czymara. 2023. “Political Elite Discourses Polarize Attitudes Toward Immigration along Ideological Lines. A Comparative Longitudinal Analysis of Europe in the Twenty-First Century.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 49 (1): 85–109. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schwörer, Jakob. 2018. “‘Populistization’ of Mainstream Parties? Evidence for Populist Contagion in Italy.” Conference: ECPR General Conference.
Shapira, Harel. 2013. Waiting for José: The Minutemen’s Pursuit of America. Princeton University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shuford, John. 2017. “The Compassion of ‘Compassionate Migration’”. In Compassionate Migration and Regional Policy in the Americas, edited by Steven Bender and William Arroca. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sinclair, Vanessa, and Donald Saklofske. 2018. “Is there a Place in Politics for Compassion? The Role of Compassion in Predicting Hierarchy-Legitimizing Views.” Self and Identity 18 (4): 425–442. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Super, David. 2004. “The New Moralizers: Transforming the Conservative Legal Agenda.” Columbia Law Review 104 (7): 2032–2096. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Téllez, Michelle, William Paul Simmons and Mariana del Hierro. 2018. “Border Crossings and Sexual Conquest in the Age of Neoliberalism in the Sonoran Desert.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 20 (4): 524–541. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Dijk, Teun. 1997. “What is Political Discourse Analysis?” In Political Linguistics, edited by Jan Blommaert and Chris Bulcaen. John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venizelos, Giorgios. 2024. “(Anti-)Populism and Post-truth.” In Post-Truth Populism, edited by Saul Newman, and Maximilian Conrad. Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wodak, Ruth. 2015. The Politics of Fear. London: Sage.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019a. “The Boundaries of what Can Be Said Have Shifted’: An Expert Interview with Ruth Wodak (Questions Posed by Andreas Schulz).” Discourse & Society 31 (2): 235–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019b. “Entering the ‘Post-Shame Era’: The Rise of Illiberal Democracy, Populism and Neo-Authoritarianism in EU-rope: The Case of the Turquoise-Blue Government in Austria.” Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs 9 (1): 195–213. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2022. “Far-Right Populist Discourses.” In The Populism Interviews: A Dialogue with Leading Experts, edited by Luca Manucci. Taylor and Francis. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue