Meaning-making in conjunctures
The affective-discursive framing of the 2024 Amsterdam violence as “failed integration” of migrants
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24213608 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Aly Amer (0009-0005-7725-8514, Utrecht University), Rik P Huizinga (0000-0001-6443-5108, Utrecht University), Ilse Van Liempt (0000-0002-4978-3101, Utrecht University), Dora Sampaio (0000-0002-0036-9989, Utrecht University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-20 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnic and Racial Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0141-9870 • E-ISSN: 1466-4356 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01419870.2026.2734283 |
| OpenAlex | W7215712744 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 36 |
In November 2024, violence following a football match in Amsterdam was framed as evidence of migrant men’s failed integration into Dutch society. The frame achieved discursive dominance, anchoring public debate, and was adopted by the government before empirical substantiation. We examine the affective-discursive processes behind the frame’s salience amid conjunctural conditions and heightened collective anxieties. We conceptualize anxiety-fear arrangements as configurations of affective relations between socio-material elements. Frames, as meaning-making devices, organize meanings and orient emotions, shaping relations within arrangements. Through a multimodal discourse analysis of political statements, parliamentary transcripts and media items, we trace how the failed integration frame organized meanings, channeling collective anxieties onto tangible objects of fear: migranticized bodies, objects and places. The frame became salient through precedence, emotional intensity, cultural resonance and moral certainty. Empirically, we illustrate how bodies are ‘migranticized’ through framing. Conceptually, the anxiety-fear arrangement provides an operative template to understand meaning-making in conjunctures.
collective anxiety · Framing · immigrant integration · Meaning-making · media framing · migrant men · political discourse · Crime, Deviance, and Social Control · Media Discourse and Social Analysis · Migration, Refugees, and Integration
The Culturalization of Citizenship
The Politics of Fear
The Cultural Politics of Emotion
Affective Arrangements
Policing the Crisis
Doing Qualitative Research
Anxious Politics
Carving out a space to belong
Against ‘immigrant integration’
Relational Dialectics Theory
People out of place
From Policy “Frames” to “Framing”
Criticising images
Geopolicing Race, Gender, and Class
Belonging and the politics of belonging
Anxious politics in the European city
Affective atmospheres
How material objects become urban things
Cross-fadings of racialisation and migratisation
Racial Europeanization
Cascading Activation
Framing
Affect and discourse - What's the problem? From affect as excess to affective/discursive practice
A phenomenology of whiteness
Not-so-subtle subtleties
We Blend in with the Crowd But they Don't
Handled with care
Men Like Us, Boys Like Them
The Structure of Context
Decolonizing the integration discourse through embedded narratives
| Highly cited | No |
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