Framing Migration: A Computational Analysis of UK Parliamentary Discourse
This study investigates the diachronic evolution of immigration discourse in the UK Parliament (1948–2023) and comparatively analyzes it against contemporaneous U.S. Congressional debate. Methodologically, it introduces a semi-automated narrative framing extraction framework integrating open-source large language models, stance annotation, sentiment analysis, time-series modeling, and topic modeling to dynamically track fine-grained narrative shifts—including securitization, integration-oriented framing, and human rights framing. Contributions include: (1) establishing the first scalable, cross-temporal, and cross-national paradigm for political narrative analysis; (2) revealing persistent and widening ideological fissures beneath bipartisan rhetorical consensus in the UK, alongside a marked rise in securitization and decline in integration discourse; and (3) identifying a structural shift whereby international law and human rights—rather than domestic immigration legislation—have become central discursive anchors, with systematic divergence between the UK and U.S. in polarization trajectories and securitization intensity.