Full text of the paper:
Collected Papers of the Faculty of Law, University of Novi Sad
2019, vol. LIII, No. 4, pp. 1319–1330
Language of the paper: Serbian
Original scientific paper
udk: 314.7(4)
doi: 10.5937/zrpfns53-23993
Author:
Tijana Perić Diligenski, Ph. D., Research Fellow
Institute for Political Studies
peric.tijana@yahoo.com
Abstract:
The migrant crisis that Europe has been facing for many years has triggered an avalanche of xenophobia and the dispersion of anti-migrant sentiments that have become the reference matrix for populist discourse. Anti-migrant discourse emerges in parallel as a form of language use and a form of social and political interaction. The antagonistic stereotypical narrative of migrants begins with the thesis that they constitute a retrograde social group that poses an economic and security threat to the natives and which is not capable of culturally assimilating in the countries of transit and destination (dichotomy Us vs. Them). Spreading anti-migrant discourse becomes a strategy for winning the electorate and an important tool for mobilizing political support. The political engineering of European political parties shows that anti-migrant discourse is not the exclusivity of right-wing parties of the political spectrum (although they are the most closely related), but is becoming an increasingly important topic on the political agenda of left-wing populism. Anti-migrant discourse is reflected through a nationalist and hostile approach to immigration, the glorification of national and sovereign narratives, and hostility to neoliberalism. Anti-migrant narratives have found their footing in the political activities of many European parties that are largely sovereignly profiled. Such a political vault of reasoning transforms migrant into a foreigner and attest on the triumph of communitarianism in regards to cosmopolitanism, which makes the EU’s slogan „in varietate concordia” (united in diversity) questionable and subject to deconstruction.
Keywords:
migrant, discourse, populism, left-wing, right-wing.