Converting International Migrations into Issue of Security: Radical Right Parties in Europe and Securitization of Migration

Abstract

This study reveals that anti-immigrant policies in Europe result from a process of securitization and that within this process radical right parties have been formulating discourses and approaches through a construction process by using some common security themes. These security themes can be classified as national security economic security cultural security and internal security The frequency with which radical right parties use these themes may vary according to the specific historical social and cultural characteristics of a particular country. The impact of these differences is studied in by a methodology based on securitization theory and critical discourse analysis and by analysing two radical right parties that achieved election success with their anti-immigrant policies: Freedom Party of Austria (FPO) from Austria and Sweden Democrat (SD) from Sweden.