Progressive policy framing : Kofi Annan's rhetorical strategy for the global forum on migration and development

Abstract

The paper explores the rationale of the Global Forum on Migration and Development that was launched by Kofi Annan in 2006 as UN Secretary General, as an informal inter-governmental discussion space. It identifies the claims in Annan’s speech to the High-Level Dialogue that he convened in New York: that international migration must be managed; that to proceed beyond the present entrenched disagreements and mistrust requires constructive structured communication; that the Global Forum can provide this and is a feasible way forward, unlike the alternatives; and that through processes of mutual education and mutual acceptance the Forum can be fruitful. Implied are notions of building trust and community amongst migration policymakers. Second, the paper monitors how the hypotheses had fared by the time of the second Forum conference, in 2008, by discourse analysis of its concluding report. The Manila meeting’s declaration of a “focus on the person” came to mean a focus on the migration policymakers and managers and the processes of their intended mutual education and team-building. To clarify this strategy and its mindset and assumptions, the paper uses a series of tools for discourse analysis that are more widely useful in migration policy debate. They include the standard tools of examination of metaphor, of silences, of allocation of roles, and of choice of frames that structure attention; and in addition a tabular form of text analysis that facilitates and organises the use of such tools, and provides the basis for an analysis of argumentative structure and overall rhetorical direction.