“BR…EXIT”. A Diatextual Analysis of Public Discourse on Migrant Italian Talents

Abstract

The theoretical and methodological framework of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a powerful resource to face the ideological intricacies of the public debate on a specific aspect of migrant people: ‘brain exit’. The relevance of brain drain (Docquier and Rapoport 2012) has been explored at several levels; however, the aim of our study is to focus on its significance for Discursive Psychology as well. The way in which it is discussed brings into play the interpretative repertories of basic objects in the organization of the culture of a community, such as ‘work’, ‘family’, ‘education’, ‘Self’, ‘nation’. Our study aims to detect the discursive pathways that oppose the ‘professional realization’ to the ‘emotional
enhancement’ as referring to the Self, to the families and to the politicians as well as to the whole community. Starting from various sources of ‘dia-textual’ (Manuti and Mininni and 2017) data, our research aims to evaluate which are the difficulties of this displacement, doubts and victories of brain drain. To satisfy this purpose, a Sentiment Analysis and Diatextual Analysis was carried out, assuming that the courageous choice to leave depends on a high motivation of the worker who sets aside his affections for work satisfaction: not by
chance, in English in the binomial ‘brain drain’ and ‘drain heart’, the heart is almost moved to the background. Diatextual Approach as a format of Critical Discourse Analysis answers
the need to ‘enlarge the paradigm’, starting from the research question about how the speech represented the social goals and how large their area of influence can be.