Migration Policies and Spatial Competition Theory: Portuguese Mainstream Parties, the Radical Right Party Chega, and Issue Ownership in the Field of Migration

This paper establishes a bridge between migration studies, populism studies, and spatial competition theory. In 2025, the Portuguese Radical Right Party Chega became the second most important party in Portugal, terminating decades of bipartisanship. Between 2019 and 2025, Chega’s growth was exponential. However, the reasons that account for such a success remain severely underexplored. The paper analyses the relationship between Portuguese mainstream parties, namely the alliance between the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Christian Democratic Party (CDS-PP), and the Portuguese Populist Radical Right Party Chega, discussing how the saliency of migration issues has reversed the efficacy of discourses based on the strategy of the cordon sanitaire. The paper analyzes political competition strategies employed by Portuguese mainstream parties in response to the Portuguese Populist Radical Right Party Chega’s hard-line stance on migration policies. The paper discusses the 2024/2025 policy developments that have completely transformed the paradigm of Portuguese migration policies and reveal the internalization by the Portuguese mainstream parties of Chega’s securitising agenda on migration questions. The paper answers the following research question: how can we characterise Portuguese mainstream parties’ political competition strategies in the context of Chega’s hard-line proposals on migration policies? The paper studies how those strategies may be addressed by building on modified spatial competition theory (Meguid, 2005). In his work about the effects of mainstream party strategies regarding niche parties, Meguid (2005) predicts that when mainstream parties accommodate the agenda of niche parties, issue ownership is transferred to those mainstream parties, leading to the decrease of niche party electoral support. The paper argues that, and contrary to Meguid’s hypotheses, Portuguese mainstream parties’ choice to accommodate Chega’s hard positioning regarding migration questions did not alter issue ownership and may have contributed to the increase of the Portuguese radical right party’s electoral support. Methodologically, the paper triangulates between document analysis and Ruth Wodak’s (2001) discourse-historical approach to discuss the evolution of Portuguese mainstream parties’ perspectives and policy proposals on migration between 2015 and 2025.