Coming to Terms with Liberal Democracy by the Populist Radical Right Parties of Western Europe: Evidence from European Parliament Speeches over Minorities and Migration
Coming to Terms with Liberal Democracy by the Populist Radical Right Parties of Western Europe: Evidence from European Parliament Speeches over Minorities and Migration

Author(s): Caner Tekin
Subject(s): Politics, Gender Studies, Geography, Regional studies, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Policy, planning, forecast and speculation, Migration Studies, Ethnic Minorities Studies, EU-Legislation, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: migration; liberal democracy; populist radical parties; Western Europe; minorities; parliament speeches; gender; identity;
Summary/Abstract: Populist radical right oppositions to international migration from Islamic countries are argued to undergo a discursive change from ultranationalist and religious constructs to –misleadingly– liberal argumentations, claiming that European liberal democracy is under threat of migration (Brubaker, 2017, pp.1191-1226; Hafez, 2014, pp.479-499; Börzel & Risse, 2018, pp.83-108; Börzel, 2016, pp.8-31). The present study aims to demonstrate how these ‘liberal’ grounds for objecting migrations exist at European (supranational) level, and explores the conceptions of liberal democracy used by pan-European radical right in opposition to migrant and minority rights. Therefore it asks how mainstream populist radical right factions represented in the European Parliament debate migrant and minority rights and what conceptions of liberal democracy emerge within their debates. It orients this question to two plenary sessions held in the European Parliament, in the shadow of the EU’s refugee crisis, to discuss the situation of fundamental rights and terrorism in Europe. Recent refugee debates in the EP have the potential to shed light on this issue, as the way populist radical right parties reject the EU’s minority, migration, and asylum policies feature exclusionary conceptions degrading the substantial meaning of liberal democracy.

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