Explaining Populist Radical Right-Wing Parties’ Opposition to Immigrant Political Transnationalism: A Comparative Analysis on the AfD and the PVV

This study aims to elucidate the stance of populist radical right-wing parties (PRRPs) regarding political transnationalism among migrants by focusing on two significant PRRPs in Western Europe, namely, the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands and the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Germany. It primarily seeks to understand the key points of opposition articulated by these parties concerning Turkish migrants’ engagement in homeland elections. As I have demonstrated in my PhD project, the exclusionary discourse of PRRPs have a significant impact on the political incorporation of migrant-origin residents in receiving countries. The fact that the PVV came first in the Dutch elections on November 22, 2023, regardless of whether the party will be able to form a government, has demonstrated the electoral potential of PRRPs and raised concerns among migrant-origin residents not only in the Netherlands but in many Western European countries. Therefore, the instrumentalisation of immigrant political transnationalism by PRRPs as part of their anti-immigrant agendas have to be addressed by the scholarship on minorities to understand the implications of this political trend for migrants. Many scholars (e.g. Kymlicka 1995; Bird et al. 2011; Fassmann & Icduygu 2013) argue that the salience of immigrant political transnationalism in political debates is vehemently linked to the politicisation of migrants and their political and social rights in Western Europe over the last decades. In recent years, the ‘transnational political practices’ (Østergaard-Nielsen 2003) of Turkish migrants in Western Europe have sparked controversies in various Western European countries. In some instances, these controversies turned into political and scholarly debates on whether political transnationalism among Turkish migrants in Western Europe implied a so-called lack of ‘integration’ in receiving countries (Sahin-Mencutek & Baser 2017; Burgess 2020; Maritato et al. 2021). Although opposition to immigrant political transnationalism does not stem solely from right-wing populist politicians, PRRPs have been able to influence political discourse and mainstream an anti-liberal approach to immigrant incorporation. An example of this effect surfaced when the Dutch Prime Minister of the conservative-liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), Mark Rutte, placed the slogan ‘Act normal or go away!’ at the centre of his party’s political campaign during the 2017 general election, emphasising the expectation that migrants must adopt Dutch ‘habits’ and ‘values’ (Taylor 2017, 23 January). This study is designed as a comparative case study based on two significant PRRPs in countries that, for many years, pursued different policies of immigrant incorporation. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the underlying motives and narratives driving opposition to political transnationalism in the context of right-wing populism, and how PRRPs instrumentalise political transnationalism in their anti-immigrant policy agendas. To this end, the strategies of these parties will be examined through party manifestos and public statements by prominent politicians from the PVV and AfD regarding migrants’ involvement in homeland elections. These statements will be analysed through content analysis using MAXQDA software.