Changing Narratives

Subproject “Changing Narratives” addresses the conflict-abatement hypothesis in the context of mass migration. It investigates how mass migration into a given society (driver) triggers off incremental big structural change via imposing costs (externalities) that can only be justified to the society when altering the national narrative in a way that preserves the legitimacy of the societal structure. With this research question, “Changing Narratives” bridges the recent innovative literature on narratives and the long-existing literature on mass migration. “Changing Narratives” postulates changing narratives as channel through which a host country adapts its institutions to handle the externalities of mass migration. First, “Changing Narratives” hypothesizes that the initial legitimacy of redistribution–a core institution–determines the likelihood of incremental big structural change and the mediating role of narratives: the higher the initial redistribution, the sooner the society converges to a common narrative about mass migration that mediates incremental big structural change, and the less polarized it becomes in reaction. Second, “Changing Narratives” hypothesizes that after actual mass migration and if integration is successful, the migrants’ voices will contribute to the narrative of the domestic society. This will further induce incremental big structural change. “Changing Narratives” develops a game-theoretical framework, implements laboratory experiments to test its theoretical predictions, and then conducts a large online survey experiment to investigate changing narratives with higher external validity.