This article critically analyses the hermeneutic commitment of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). In the theoretical framework of IPA, the role of preconceptions and prejudices is consistently downplayed; priority is given to the participant's own words. Paley has argued that IPA’s interpretative phase is always and necessarily determined by the researcher's fore‐conceptions, as opposed to the participant's narrative. I demonstrate that IPA’s failure to recognize the importance of an external frame of reference in interpretation may arise from the misunderstanding of the method's hermeneutic underpinnings. I essentially argue that bracketing the researcher's fore‐conceptions during the initial phases of IPA is merely an illusion. While it is beyond the scope of this article to dispute whether IPA is genuinely phenomenological, my claim ultimately poses a challenge to IPA’s phenomenological commitment on its own terms. The article concludes with a proposal to substantially improve IPA’s consistency with hermeneutic tradition and its grounding in phenomenological philosophy.

This article argues that phenomenological sociology has great potential to provide a strong theoretical support to the Sociocognitive Approach (SCA) in Critical Discourse Studies. SCA is interested in the interconnections between knowledge, discourse and society while placing subjectivity in the centre of its framework. It looks into the correlative relationship between personal- and socially shared knowledge, and the significance of these correlations to discourse production and interpretation. Analogously, phenomenological sociology explores the interrelated structures of subjectivity, knowledge and the social world. It systematically analyses the conditions and forms of intersubjective understanding and the mutually constitutive relationship between subjective- and objective knowledge. Given the considerable overlap between the subject matter of phenomenological sociology and that of SCA, the purpose of the article is to draw the attention of critical discourse analysts to a neglected but extremely resourceful field. Following a brief introduction to SCA, the article will address some of SCA’s key concepts in conjunction with the phenomenological-sociological insight.

In the summer of 2015 Hungary constructed a 175 km long barbed-wire fence at its southern border with Serbia. New criminal offences and asylum procedures were introduced that limited access to refugee status determination and ignored agreed EU asylum policy, deterring and de facto preventing asylum seekers from entering Hungarian territory. This paper provides an analysis of these new measures, which criminalized asylum seekers, and the subsequent Hungarian policy in relation to the case law of the European Court of Human Rights – arguing that the Hungarian authorities excessively abused their discretion in implementing these new policies of immigration and border control.

Integrating the discursive and practice-based approach to securitisation, this article explores how the police function as the audience of securitising discourse. Taking the Hungarian case of border control, it looks into how the police accept and buy into anti-immigrant discourses of the political elite. Based on a questionnaire survey of Hungarian police officers, it demonstrates the potential of discursive legitimation in shaping officers' understanding of mass migration. It describes the ways in which attitudes and hence, arguably, practice can be conditioned by securitising discourse. The overall aim of the article is to advance the understanding of the narrative dimension of power struggles between police and the political elite, and how that structures the field of border security. Critical security scholars have pointed out that police filter securitising discourse based on their professional dispositions and preferences. However, the Hungarian case seems to suggest that discourse may, in fact, influence dispositions themselves.

This article demonstrates that Alfred Schutz’s theory of typification and relevance together have a great potential to conceptually clarify certain aspects of self-categorisation theory. More specifically, it focuses on the motivational bases of stereotyping, one of the core mechanisms underlying the categorisation of people into groups. Social psychologists have found that stereotyping of out-group members is motivated by factors, such as uncertainty reduction, or the enhancement of the self-esteem of in-group members. What categories and corresponding stereotypes are being activated and applied is ultimately a function of the goals and pragmatic interests of the perceiver in any given situation. The article argues that this phenomenon can be explained, and accounted for, by Schutz’s tripartite system of relevances. To illustrate the theoretical issues at hand, the last section draws on the case of migrants arriving in Hungary and provides a potential explanation for why the ideal type of the Gypsy was triggered and facilitated the way in which migrants have been attended and understood.