Matters of Life and Death: the Discursive Construction of the Population, Identity and Threat in Russian Discourse on Demographic Developments 2000-2015

This dissertation studies governmental discourse on demographic change in Russia between 2000 and 2015. It seeks to establish how and to what effect demographic developments are framed as an existential threat to the preservation of the Russian state as well as the integrity of the Russian population. This work further investigates how alarmist demographic discourse in Russia structures social space and strives to fixate a particular representation of the Russian population as a naturalized component of collective identity. The theoretical and methodological framework informing this dissertation is rooted in social constructionist discourse analysis and further draws upon the Foucauldian concepts of biopower and biopolitics as well as discursive approaches to security studies. The analysis focuses on high-level governmental statements, legal documents and policy texts to demonstrate how the discourse of demographic threat is mobilized in the domains of family, health and migration policy to construct demographic norms of individual behaviour and collective outcomes.