Discourses in European Union organizations: Aspects of access, participation, and exclusion

The aim of this paper is to make processes of co-constructing, negotiating, defining, legitimizing, and justifying inclusion/exclusion in European Union (EU) organizations transparent, both on a structural and on a discursive level. Moreover, individual experiences from migrants present everyday exclusionary practices. In this attempt, I use research on EU organizations and on discrimination in eight EU countries (focus-group discussions) as illustrative examples. I propose a ‘discourse-historical’ framework, which relates different discursive and structural forms of inclusion and exclusion to each other. I assume that many contradictions come into play, while discursive shifts in inclusion and exclusion are decided upon. These contradictions imply—