EN
This study in discourse analysis and politolinguistics discusses the work-related migration within the European Union in 2005 and 2013/2014. The interest of this study is not only in the content matter of discourse focused on German newspapers, but specifically in distinctive figures of speech. At the center of interest is the metaphor of water and its source and target domains. This metaphor is characteristic of the German work-related migration discourse not only in the year 2005 after the eastern enlargement of the European Union in 2004, but we can also find it in 2013/2014 at the time when the Bulgarians and Romanians were allowed to offer free movement of services. The discourse analysis aims to identify keywords of this discourse, topic interlacings, patterns of argumentation and valuations connected with them. A specific kind of valuation results from a specific kind of contextualisation of metaphors and of their collocations in the German-speaking community.