No joking matter: Discursive struggle in the Canadian refugee system

Abstract

Organizations often engage in discursive struggle as they attempt to shape and manage the institutional field of which they are a part. This struggle is influenced by broader discourses at the societal level that enable and constrain discursive activity within the institutional field. We investigate this relationship by combining a study of political cartoons, as indicators of the broader societal discourse around immigration, with a case study of the Canadian refugee system, a complex institutional field. Our analysis reveals the complex intertextual and interdiscursive relations that characterize and surround institutional fields, and shows how discursive struggle in the refugee determinat..