Disasters create a fertile context for the scapegoating of minority groups, yet the discursive strategies used to legitimize this hostility remain understudied. This study addresses this gap by analysing how anti-refugee sentiment is discursively justified on social media during a crisis. We investigated how language on social media is used to legitimize hostility against refugees during disasters. Using a critical discursive psychology (CDP) approach, we analysed 345 posts on X that targeted Afghan refugees during the devastating July 2021 wildfires in Türkiye. Our analysis identifies three key discursive strategies that function to justify exclusion while avoiding charges of anti-refugee hostility and racism: (1) constructing refugees as a catastrophic threat akin to disasters; (2) circulating conspiracy theories that blame refugees for causing the crisis; and (3) delegitimizing refugees through categorization practices that question their moral worth and right to belong. Rather than relying on overtly racist language, these strategies draw on rational-seeming arguments about security, resource competition and cultural difference to build a warrant for exclusion. Our research expands the literature on the interplay between discourse and racism by demonstrating how racist verbal strategies are leveraged during disasters to legitimize hostility against refugees, thereby reinforcing social hierarchies and naturalizing exclusionary policies.
Tekin et al. (Thu,) studied this question.