The Politicisation and Framing of Immigration in Parliamentary Debates in Poland, 2013–2024

As in other Central and Eastern European countries, immigration was not a hot topic for political debates in Poland before 2015. The European migration and refugee crisis marked a turning point, even though large migration flows from the Middle East and Northern Africa did not reach Poland. Since then, subsequent migration-related crises – including the crisis at the Polish–Belarusian border, the Ukrainian refugee crisis, and the so-called visa scandal – have been used by political parties to politicise immigration. This paper investigates how political parties politicised immigration in parliamentary debates during these crises between 2013 and 2024. It draws on a quantitative content analysis of all plenary debates in the Polish Sejm on immigration-related issues over this time period. The study traces changes in party strategic behaviour, focusing on the salience of immigration in MPs’ speeches and the frames employed. Particular attention is given to the issue entrepreneurship of radical right parties and their potential contagion effects on strategies of other parties. The findings show that the level of politicisation of immigration in Poland was high throughout most of the analysed period. Over time, a growing number of parties, including liberal ones, strengthened their anti-immigration rhetoric by adopting securitisation-related frames, which may indicate the adoption of accommodative strategies by mainstream parties and the mainstreaming of far-right discourse. Politicisation was not merely a reaction to external migration pressures, as parties and their representatives, acting as political entrepreneurs, have not only responded to migration crises, but also actively constructed them in parliamentary debates, particularly in pre-election periods.