Migration macht krank – Gesundheits- und Krankheitsdiskurse in AfD-Wahlprogrammen
Migration Makes You Sick – Health and Disease Discourses in AfD Election Programs

Summary/Abstract: The article is dedicated to the question of how health and disease discourses are linked to the migration discourse in AfD election programs. For this purpose, twenty election programs of the party from the years 2016 to 2021 are evaluated in terms of content, which were adopted for the elections to the state parliaments, the Bundestag and the European Parliament. Based on the evaluation, seven different sub-discourses can be identified in which health or disease-related topics are linked to the migration discourse. The focus here is on the portrayal of migrants as carriers of diseases, as a danger to the health of the population and in particular of health care workers, and on the exploitation and thus endangerment of the German health care system by migrants. Statistical analysis shows that references to these motifs occur continuously in the programs studied. A significantly stronger access to these discourses can be demonstrated in election programs from the new German states. In general, migrants are directly or indirectly portrayed as a threat to the health of the population in all sub-discourses. Overall, it can be shown that references to health and illness discourses are integrated by the AfD into its xenophobic program in order to generate feelings of threat and fear among voters. Overall, the AfD is thus less concerned with the issues of health and illness than with reinforcing xenophobic emotions among the population.

• Details
• Contents