From asylum to administration: Bureaucratic legitimacy and the strategic silencing of refugees and migrants in Greek immigration discourse

Abstract

This study examines the discourse of Makis Voridis during his 2025 tenure as Greek Minister of Migration and Asylum, focusing on how bureaucratic legitimacy is constructed through the strategic silencing of refugee and migrant voices. Using corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, the research combines frequency analysis with Systemic Functional Grammar to show how Greek immigration discourse frames migration as a security threat and asylum as an administrative burden rather than a right. The analysis identifies three key discursive strategies: (1) the securitisation of migration, (2) the bureaucratisation and depoliticisation of asylum procedures, and (3) the strategic silencing of refugees and migrants and the erasure of their agency and rights. These findings contribute to understanding how exclusionary migration policies are legitimised through technocratic discourse while preserving the appearance of democratic governance.