Migration as democratic boundary-making : far-right normalization in Europe

Mandelc, Damjan (author)

Over the past decade, far-right parties have moved from the political margins into the mainstream of several European democracies. This article examines how migration functions not primarily as a demographic driver of electoral change, but as a discursive resource through which democratic boundaries are redefined. Drawing on a qualitative comparative analysis of political speeches, party manifestos, and public debates in selected European countries between 2014 and 2022, the study investigates how migration is constructed as a threat to welfare systems, national cohesion, and liberal-democratic order. The analysis integrates three complementary frameworks of ethno-pluralism, welfare chauvinism, and civic nationalism to demonstrate how exclusion is legitimized through moralized appeals to culture, fairness, and liberal values. Rather than rejecting democracy outright, far-right actors reinterpret concepts such as citizenship, solidarity, and equality in conditional and culturally bounded terms. Migration thus operates as a symbolic condensation of broader anxieties related to globalization, economic insecurity, and political distrust. The findings show how democratic language itself can normalize exclusionary interpretations of membership, contributing to gradual forms of democratic erosion across Europe.

• Language: English
• Keywords: far-right politics, migration, democratic boundary-making, democratic erosion, welfare chauvinism, civic nationalism, Europe
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FF - Faculty of Arts
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Publication date: 09.04.2026
• Year: 2026
• Number of pages: Str. 1-21
• Numbering: Vol. 14, iss. 4, 243
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-181659
• UDC: 32
• ISSN on article: 2076-0760
• DOI: 10.3390/socsci15040243
• COBISS.SI-ID: 274888963
• Publication date in RUL: 10.04.2026

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Social sciences
• Shortened title: Soc. sci.
• Publisher: MDPI
• ISSN: 2076-0760
• COBISS.SI-ID: 32378973

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: evropska politika, politične stranke, desnica, migracije, demokracija, oblikovanje meja, socialni šovinizem, državljanski nacionalizem, Evropa

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P6-0194
• Name: Problemi avtonomije in identitet v času globalizacije