“We Are a Small Country That Has Done Enormously Lot”: The ‘Refugee Crisis’ and the Hybrid Discourse of Politicizing Immigration in Sweden

This article looks at mainstream political discourses about immigration in Sweden during the recent “refugee crisis”. It argues that different patterns of politicization of immigration have traditionally dominated in Sweden and focuses on Swedish mainstream politics wherein, as is shown, explicit focus on politicization via (previous as well as current) immigration-related policies still persists. However, as the analysis of Sweden's Social Democratic Party's Twitter discourse shows, a hybrid new discourse of politicization is now emerging. It allows political actors to legitimize immigration policy with often populist-like politicization and the use of new modes of online political communication

Adapting to party lines: the effect of party affiliation on attitudes to immigration

<p>Public opinion on immigration is increasingly relevant for political behaviour. However, little is known about the way in which citizens’ political allegiances in turn shape their attitudes to immigration. Abundant existing evidence suggests that voters often take cues from the parties they support. Using panel data from the Netherlands and Sweden, this article investigates the dynamic relation between attitudes to immigration and party preferences. The longitudinal nature of the data allows for making stronger claims about causal mechanisms than previous cross-sectional studies. The analysis shows that voters who change their preference to the Radical Right become stricter on immigration, whereas voters changing to the Greens become less strict on immigration over time. This confirms that citizens’ support for anti- and pro-immigration parties results in a ‘radicalisation’ of their views on immigration along party lines. A similar ‘spiral’ of radicalisation can be found around the issue of European integration.</p

The Eurosceptic Europeanization of public spheres: print and social media reactions to the 2014 European Parliament elections.

The present study tests the theoretical claim that Eurosceptics contribute to the Europeanization of national public spheres. Although advocating a renationalization of European politics, Eurosceptic parties can engender public media debates of transnational or European relevance. Through a comparative research design of two national cases (Sweden and Denmark), we examine the public discourse on the day following the 2014 European Parliament elections across three media: print, Twitter, and Facebook. Separating the discussions of Eurosceptic issues and actors from other topics of the election coverage, we find that the discourses about Euroscepticism exhibit a higher degree of Europeanization in four of the six media analyzed. Moreover, while we detect significant differences in valence between the Swedish and Danish press when reporting about the Eurosceptics, such national variation is much less pronounced on the social networking sites. The findings suggest, firstly, that Eurosceptics’ contestation of the EU may have the unintended effect of giving national media debates a stronger European dimension. Secondly, the study warrants moderate optimism for the Europeanization potential of social media vis-à-vis traditional media structures: Print media was more Europeanized in scope, whereas social media publics were more aligned in their sentiment toward Euroscepticism