For government communicators, the challenge is no longer just delivering information, but navigating a crowded arena of competing narratives. On 3 July, the Club of Venice convened in Brussels, bringing together senior government communicators and experts from across Europe. Meeting twice a year since 1986, the Club of Venice acts as a forum to share information, strategies, and support.
James Dennison, Professor at the EUI's Migration Policy Centre, has been a regular invitee to the Club since 2018, including this meeting focused on narratives regarding migration and Eastern enlargement.
There, Dennison outlined a pivotal moment in migration discourse: one in which rapid technological and geopolitical changes, low fertility rates, and Europeanisation of public opinion and policies are creating the opportunity for new migration narratives. This means understanding narratives as necessary and unavoidable sense-making devices, whose power lies in their selective assumptions and content.
As ever, deeply held beliefs and emotionally resonant stories are driving policy preferences more than hard data alone. “Narratives,” he argued, “are not optional. They are how people make sense of reality.” For communicators, this means working proactively with narratives rather than treating them as afterthoughts or obstacles.
Importantly, he cautioned that confronting negative perceptions directly is often ineffective. Instead, he advocated for a more strategic approach: one that focuses on reinforcing compelling positive narratives and framing messages in alignment with the audience’s existing predispositions.
Dennison also highlighted the importance of plausibility in public communication. Narratives that are both logically coherent and supported by evidence naturally perform better, but this is not enough. “Emotions, when carefully selected, can be used in communication to make one’s messages and narratives more resonant and impactful on both attitudes and behaviours,” he added.
Above all, to persuade, communicators must generate trust — something that can only be earned in the long term. As an issue such as immigration becomes more salient to the public, we can expect more narratives on it to proliferate; this should not be confused for public opinion, rather as various attempts to interpret a complex reality.
Against this backdrop, more robust research into the long-term effects of migration narratives — not only on public opinion, but also on political behaviour, media consumption, and emigration trends— can be helpful for governments.
Access the related report ‘Re-balancing migration narratives: key lessons on communication from EUROMED Migration V’.