Right-Wing Ethnopopulism and Migration Policy

Ethnopopulist parties frame migrants and elites as dual threats, portraying human mobility as a danger to national identity and sovereignty orchestrated by powerful domestic or international entities. This chapter focuses on the migration discourses and policies of four right-wing ethnopopulist parties in Italy and Poland: Fratelli d’Italia, Lega, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, and Konfederacja. By doing so, we summarise and nuance existing scholarship on populism and migration through three interrelated claims. First, we highlight the subtle but meaningful differences across ethnopopulist parties’ stance on migration. Relatedly, we show that ethnopopulist discourse varies in its securitising and domopolitical traits, framing migrants as threats and the nation as a home to different degrees. Last, we show that right-wing ethnopopulists’ migration policy largely features incremental rather than revolutionary changes, adding to the restrictions enacted by mainstream parties rather than overhauling existing border enforcement and asylum regimes.