This contribution tackles the link between migration and security from the point of view of public opinion research, looking at the role of security concerns in shaping public attitudes towards migrants, and exploring party competition over migration as a security issue. The aim of this chapter is, first, to critically review and systematize the growing research investigating the migration–security nexus in public opinion and party politics studies, providing the conceptual and analytical tools for understanding the political dynamics that led to the securitization of migration in European polities. Second, the chapter shall build upon available multinational survey data to question when and how the idea of migration as a security concern first emerged, and when it came to dominate public attitudes towards migrants, suggesting individual and context-level factors explaining the prevalence of securitized understandings. Third, the chapter uses party manifesto data to explore the way mainstream and radical parties in Western Europe address immigration affairs, focusing on the relative importance of law and order vis-à-vis more traditional economic and cultural arguments. In so doing, this chapter not only offers an innovative exploration of the discursive construction of migration by political parties, but it also provides a quantitative assessment of securitization theories, offering an empirical overview of the parallel development of the security framework in public opinion and in party competition.
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Front Matter
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PART I: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF MIGRATION AND SECURITY
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PART II: UNDERSTANDING THE SECURITIZATION OF MIGRATION
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PART III: THE MULTIPLE FACETS OF THE SECURITIZATION OF MIGRATION
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PART IV: GLOBAL AND REGIONAL DIMENSION OF THE SECURITIZATION OF MIGRATION
