Framing Migration: A Computational Analysis of UK Parliamentary Discourse
🤖 AI Summary
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.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
We present a large-scale computational analysis of migration-related discourse in UK parliamentary debates spanning over 75 years and compare it with US congressional discourse. Using open-weight LLMs, we annotate each statement with high-level stances toward migrants and track the net tone toward migrants across time and political parties. For the UK, we extend this with a semi-automated framework for extracting fine-grained narrative frames to capture nuances of migration discourse. Our findings show that, while US discourse has grown increasingly polarised, UK parliamentary attitudes remain relatively aligned across parties, with a persistent ideological gap between Labour and the Conservatives, reaching its most negative level in 2025. The analysis of narrative frames in the UK parliamentary statements reveals a shift toward securitised narratives such as border control and illegal immigration, while longer-term integration-oriented frames such as social integration have declined. Moreover, discussions of national law about immigration have been replaced over time by international law and human rights, revealing nuances in discourse trends. Taken together broadly, our findings demonstrate how LLMs can support scalable, fine-grained discourse analysis in political and historical contexts.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
Analyzing UK parliamentary migration discourse over 75 years
Tracking political party stances and narrative frames on migration
Comparing UK-US migration discourse polarization and thematic shifts
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
Using open-weight LLMs to annotate migration stances
Developing semi-automated framework for narrative extraction
Tracking discourse trends across time and political parties
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