The master's thesis aims primarily to problematize discursive reproductions of Balkanist discourse as part of the stubborn discourse of otherness, identity construction, and stereotyping, reflecting in the comments on the reporting of temporary migrant workers from the former Yugoslavia. This strategically constructed system of knowledge about 'them,' 'southerners' or, more broadly, 'Balkans,' with its established self-evidentness, shapes discriminatory views of the world. The present work first tries to denaturalize the latter, questioning its epistemological and ontological certainties with a qualitative genealogical approach of historicization and deconstruction. The results of the analysis suggest, first, that the structure of Balkan discourse is still based on ambivalence, roughly reflected in pro-and anti-immigrant views, and second that this ambivalence underlies specific discursive categories that strategically distance from or ignore the Other, and at the same time maintain its characteristic polarization of 'us' and 'them.'
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