Migrants and Natives - ′Them′ and ′Us′

Mainstream and Radical Right Political Rhetoric in Europe

Kristina Boréus

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526486301
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Immigration Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In light of the recent global resurgence of radical and populist right-wing parties, this book examines hostile and anti-immigration rhetoric in Europe. Topical and timely, it deftly guides the reader through the trajectories of radical right parties and contextualises discriminatory rhetoric in wider immigration and integration politics.

Grounded in a focussed, comparative critical discourse study that draws on methods from social science and linguistics, the book:

• Presents a study of political rhetoric on migration in several European countries over the past thirty-five years, drawing out similarities and differences.
• Explores anti-immigration rhetoric before and after the 2015 refugee/solidarity crisis.
• Illuminates the role of so-called 'mainstream' parties in developing and legitimising discriminatory rhetoric.

Exposing the insidious nature of malevolent political rhetoric and its consequences, this book is a timely and essential read.

1 Anti-immigration and anti-migrant rhetoric as part of politics

Aims of the book

This book analyses political rhetoric, contextualising it in a changing political landscape. The object of study is rhetoric on immigration and migrants produced by parliamentarian political parties in the context of general election campaigns between 1986 and 2019. Not all rhetoric is made from a threat perspective on immigration or from a native dominance perspective; in the next two chapters alternative perspectives will be introduced. The book, however, focuses on rhetoric that is strongly negative to immigration, and rhetoric that attacks and denigrates migrants or proposes politics that would make their lives more difficult. I refer to such rhetoric as anti-immigration and anti-migrant rhetoric, respectively.

Describing and comparing national rhetoric

The first aim of the book is to give a systematic comparative account of rhetoric on migration and integration policy, especially regarding its anti-immigration and anti-migrant content, as expressed in election campaigns in Austria, Denmark and Sweden, thereby showing national characteristics of this kind of rhetoric, as well as what it has in common. The choice of the three countries is motivated by an interest in the influence on politics, especially its rhetorical part, of the radical right parties – henceforward often RR parties – that have grown rapidly during the last decades. The three countries are small prosperous European welfare states, all EU members. The majority languages are Germanic, which might be of importance in a study comparing rhetoric. However, as shown in Figure 1.1 below, they have seen different degrees of success for RR parties within their party systems. Austria has witnessed the largest voter support for this kind of party, while Sweden, with the exception for the period 1991–1994, had not seen an RR party in parliament before 2010. Denmark falls in between, as its RR parties have received stronger voter support than the Swedish ones but not as strong a support base as have the Austrian RR parties. Comparing rhetoric from the same genres in a structured, focused way in the three countries is a design that permits a comparison of the influence of RR parties. It is not a perfect design since there are other circumstances than the strength of the RR parties that differ between the countries that could have an influence on the evolution of anti-immigration and anti-migrant rhetoric. Real-world politics seldom allows for a perfect design of comparative case studies, however (George & Bennett 2005).

This first aim, to compare Austrian, Danish and Swedish political rhetoric, is met in the next two chapters. Chapter 2 analyses rhetoric on immigration politics, both in regard to labour and to refugee immigration. The rhetoric is analysed with the help of four perspectives: apart from the threat perspective, I also refer to a perspective from which immigrants – typically labour migrants – are considered as an asset, the utility perspective. The two other perspectives introduced are mostly drawn on in debates on refugee immigration: the rights perspective and the charity perspective. The chapter also relates the rhetorical aspect of politics to the broader politics on labour and refugee migration in Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

In Chapter 3 the gaze is turned inwards, to rhetoric on what ought to happen once migrants are allowed to stay in the countries they have moved to: rhetoric on integration policies. The analysis regards the extent to which new inhabitants are expected to have equal rights to the natives. As a backdrop to the analysis I look at the basic divide made in the rhetoric – that between the native ‘us’ and the migrant ‘them’ – and exemplify different linguistic expressions of this divide, as well as at the attempts to counteract it rhetorically. The rhetoric is contextualised in the broader politics on rights for migrants in Austria, Denmark and Sweden.

Describing and comparing party rhetoric

A second aim of the book is to point to rhetorical differences and similarities between parties of different ‘party families’ (see further below) in the same countries as well as between those of the same party family in different countries. All comparisons of ‘national rhetoric’ are thus combined with a comparison of the rhetoric produced by different parties. These results are also reported in Chapters 2 and 3.

In Chapters 2 and 3 the focus is thus on Austrian, Danish and Swedish political party rhetoric on immigration and integration policies. For illustration, and also for the purpose of showing that the perspectives used for the analysis are not unique to the three countries, election campaign material from four other European countries is also cited: political rhetoric from Germany, Norway, Spain and the UK. These texts have a more central role in regard to the study’s third aim.

Tracing rhetorical change

A third aim of the study is to enhance our understanding of what has happened rhetorically in a short and current time perspective. The events of 2015 and 2016, when refugees, many of whom fled the Syrian civil war, arrived in Europe in unusually large numbers, referred to as the ‘refugee/solidarity crisis’ in this book, have affected political discourses and rhetoric. Has this meant discernible changes in position between perspectives on migration and integration for the major parties in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK? The addition of Germany, Norway, Spain and the UK was made in order to be able to draw a broader picture of West European political rhetoric.¹ A comparison of ‘before’ and ‘after’ the crisis is made in Chapter 4. Here, too, the perspectives on immigration policy and central aspects of the perspectives on integration policy are used as analytical tools.

1. The choice of these particular countries rather than others that may have worked better theoretically was basically decided by my own lack of competence in other languages. That language competence limits the possible case selection is often a fact in social science and humanitarian research, even if it is seldom spelled out in the presentation of the study results.

Understanding RR party influence

A fourth aim of this book, already referred to above, is to add to the understanding of the influence of RR parties on politics and rhetoric in regard to immigration and migrants. I discuss the results of the analyses presented in the book in the light of literature on radical right parties’ policy impact in Chapter 5, which also summarises the results and makes a modest attempt to open up a debate on the alternatives to closed borders and discriminatory and unequal societies.

Contributions

The main contribution of the book is to research on political discourse on migration and migrants, a large research field to which scholars departing from CDS have contributed strongly. This literature has often focused on the emerging radical right and populist parties and their rhetoric (e.g. Journal of Language and Politics 16:4 2017; Krzyz.anowski 2013; Wodak 2013, 2015). Some studies analyse the debates in which the RR parties have been involved, hence also other parties, within particular countries (e.g. on Austria, see Krzyz.anowski & Wodak 2009; Reisigl & Wodak 2000). To my knowledge, however, no study has taken the stance of this book: a systematic comparison of the rhetoric of all major parliamentarian parties in a number of countries over time. To understand more about how anti-immigration and anti-migrant political rhetoric evolves and affects political discourses, more attention is needed on the other parties – the ‘mainstream parties’ – and their rhetorical choices. That is the approach chosen in the present study.

Works informed by CDS have furthermore been criticised for their ‘scarceness of systematic comparative perspectives’ (Kortekangas 2018: 201). There are some exceptions to this in the field of studies of racist or discriminatory discourse, however, such as van Dijk (1993) and Wodak and van Dijk (2000). The study presented here adds contemporality and comparisons over time to that research.

The systematic comparative approach of the present study is a contribution in itself by showing a particular way of comparing large amounts of texts, influenced by CDS and by the kind of analysis of ideas often used by political scientists, which allows for highlighting national characteristics of the analysed discourses as well as party family characteristics. The results enhance our knowledge of the discursive treatment of migrants and ideas on immigration in different national political discourses and over time, as well as in different European party families. The results widen our understanding of the impact of the RR parties, which is also a contribution to the political science research field of party policy.

In the rest of this chapter a background to the present (2020) situation is provided. The rise of RR parties in Europe is focused on, their core ideas are presented and the rise of these parties within the political systems of Austria, Denmark and Sweden is accounted for. The importance of the so-called mainstream parties is emphasised. Thereafter, the corpora and the methods for analysing them are introduced.

The rise of radical right parties in Western Europe

The rise of RR parties all over Europe, along with the growth of think tanks, informal circles of intellectuals, internet sites, social media, and radio stations with similar or more extreme messages (Rydgren 2018), is important for the current situation, which is described as concerning in the Introduction. The rise of a radical, nationalist, racist right that attacks migrants, Muslims and other minorities, as well as immigration and the ‘multicultural’ society is a global one. It can be described as ‘one of the most significant political changes in democratic states during the past decades’ (Rydgren 2018: 1).

RR parties have multiplied in Western Europe since the 1980s and a number of them have entered parliaments. Some of them have seen a straightforward growth in voter support. Of 11 countries with ‘radical right-wing populist parties’ in the period 1990–2015, the average share of votes for these parties was highest in the period 2010–2015 in five, highest in the period 2000–2009 in four, and highest in two countries in the period 1990–1999. Austria, Denmark and Sweden all belong in the first group. In the 2000s, RR parties have been in office in Austria, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland (see Tables 1.1 and 1.2; Akkerman et al. 2016: 2–3).

Figure 1.1 depicts the development of the vote for RR parties that have achieved 2 per cent or more of the votes in general elections between 1986 and 2019 in six out of the seven countries from which the analysed rhetoric was drawn. In the UK, an RR party had not received 2 per cent when this book was finished.²

2. The Brexit Party reached 2 per cent in the 2019 general elections. I have not counted it among RR parties due to its lack of expressing ideas of ethnic nationalism or strong anti-immigration in its Contract with the People (Brexit Party 2019). (It does express anti-immigration stances so this choice was not self-evident.)

Austria, Denmark and Norway have seen a stable presence of RR parties in their political systems over the entire period. The Austrian parties in question are the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), FPÖ, and, for a period of time, The Alliance (for the) Future of Austria (Bündnis Zukunft Österreichs), BZÖ, a splinter party from FPÖ.

In both Norway and Denmark, neo-liberal and populistic ‘progress parties’ were formed in the 1970s (Fremskridtspartiet in Denmark and Fremskrittspartiet in Norway). A split from the Danish Progress Party, the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti), became the strong and stable RR force in Danish politics. In Figure 1.1 the New Non-Socialists (an approximate translation of Nye Borgerlige), which entered the Danish parliament as a result of the 2019 elections, is included.

Sweden saw a short-lived RR party, New Democracy (Ny Demokrati), enter parliament in the early 1990s but did not have a party on 2 per cent or more again until 2006 with the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna).

Germany has seen a steep rise in support for an RR party, Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland), AfD, established in 2013, while this development is even more recent in Spain where the party Vox passed the threshold to parliament in 2019.

The rhetoric of all these parties has been strongly hostile to immigration and migrants, although their rise has also been affected by other issues than migration-related ones. This is not least the case for Vox, whose rise is closely connected to the contention between the Catalonian independence efforts and the efforts to keep Spain together as one country.

Figure 1.1 Voter support for RR parties in the general elections in six countries when 2 per cent or above, 1986–2019 (per cent)³

3. Only the results of the second 2019 election are noted for Spain.

Labelling and sorting the parties

The growth of RR parties has spawned a large scholarly literature. Since the 1990s, significantly...