Construcción discursiva del desempleo en Riohacha como problema público: narrativas y respuesta institucional del nivel nacional y local (2022–2024)

Abstract

This article examines unemployment in Riohacha as a public problem whose definition, interpretation, and institutional projection are discursively constructed across different levels of the state. In a city characterized by territorial inequality, labor informality, and a historically peripheral condition, unemployment circulates not only as a statistical indicator but also as an object of public communication, institutional narratives, and discursive strategies that shape how the issue is understood and how responses to it are projected by different levels of government. The research is guided by the following question: How do the national government (the Presidency and the Ministry of Labor) and Riohacha’s local institutions (the Mayor’s Office and the Secretariat of Economic Development) discursively construct unemployment as a public problem and institutionally project their responses to it during the 2022–2024 period? Adopting a qualitative methodological approach and a case study design, the analysis draws on content analysis and discourse analysis techniques, grounded in the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu, as well as contributions from framing theory and studies on the public sphere and institutional legitimacy. The study identifies the principal frames through which unemployment is represented at both the national and local levels and highlights differences, gaps, and disconnections in the ways these two levels communicate the phenomenon.