Analysing 'migrant' membership frames through education policy discourse: An example of restrictive 'integration' policy within Europe

This article proposes combining discourse theory and perspectives on political membership developments in Western European societies. It combines theories and examples of policy discourses about ‘migrant integration’ in the Swiss national context in the sphere of education. This examination aims to deconstruct specific membership framing within Europe and boundary setting between inclusion and exclusion of certain groups in policy sectors such as education. Analysing discourse through understandings within language enables us to see the way categories and frames are constructed and contribute to the signifying of membership. Bounded problematisations, in this case about ‘migrants’, framed by political orientations and discourses, require policy ‘solutions’. Actors then make sense of this policy and interpret ‘solutions’ in distinctive ways. This article aims at disclosing how membership practices in Western European countries such as Switzerland may remain restrictive because ‘migration’ is problematised.