Politicization and Framing of the Refugee and Migration Crisis?: A Content Analysis of Parliamentary Debates in the Visegrad Countries

This article presents a quantitative examination of how political parties across the political spectrum in the Visegrad countries framed migrants and refugees over the course of the recent refugee crisis. A literature on the securitisation of migration assumes the prominence of securitising narrative, but its prevalence has not been documented in a comparative context through cross-country analysis of the relative prominence of various immigration-related frames. To the extent party framing and narratives of migrants and refugees were comparatively examined, it has been done so particularly for Western European countries and not for Central and Eastern European states. We argue that there are differences between these two groups of countries that prevent simple transfer of knowledge from one group to other. For these reasons, this paper tests the securitisation thesis based on quantitative content analysis of party narratives and framing of migrants and refugees in parliamentary debates in the Visegrad countries. Secondly, the paper investigates whether left-right positioning of political parties explains party framing of migrants and refugees. The results indicate that there is a pre-eminent securitised metanarrative across the political spectrum. While centre-left parties were more likely to frame refugees and migrants in terms of humanitarian frame, security-based framing was significant in all parties’ speeches. Moreover, radical right and populist parties were more likely than others to frame refuges in terms of cultural-threat/nativist frame. This paper contributes to the scholarly debate on the refugee crisis, showing how the immigration issue can impact on domestic party politics.