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10. Anti-Immigrant Politics in Europe: The Radical Right, Xenophobic Tendencies, and Their Political Environment
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140 chapter ten Anti-Immigrant Politics in Europe The Radical Right, Xenophobic Tendencies, and Their Political Environment Michael Minkenberg Today’s European societies are characterized by socially and economically marginal immigrant communities. Political elites—largely divided on this issue— respond mainly when the media report or public outcries push them, rarely in immigrants ’ favor. More established parties compete with old and new radical right parties, which now regularly strive to push the political agenda on immigration and multiculturalism in many countries to the right, sometimes with violence. This chapter examines the rise of radical right-wing anti-immigrant politics and violence in several European democracies, and their impact on established parties, mainstream debate, and public policies affecting immigrant political incorporation. It underscores how established political actors have sought to preempt or coopt radical right mobilizations, thus granting them new legitimacy and, hence, engaging in a politics of exclusive (rather than inclusive) boundary shifting toward immigrants that highlights the differences between “us” and “them” (see Jennifer Hochschild and John Mollenkopf, chap. 2 in this volume). After the 1970s, a new radical right emerged in Europe that replaced attacks on the democratic order as a whole with populist and ethnocentric campaigns to foster a rightist, value-based, New Politics cleavage (Minkenberg 2000, 2002; Ignazi 2003). The impact of deindustrialization and globalization on traditional party alignments assisted this effort (Downs 2001), as did the role of public opinion as a resonance chamber for anti-immigrant politics (Minkenberg 1998, chap. 9; 2002; see also McAdam 1982; Rucht 1994). In short, to understand the emergence and impact of radical right parties, we must look at how right-wing radical mobilization interacted with the larger political environment. Three elements are of particular interest: the organizational strength and party and nonparty forms of the radical right, its ability to mobilize support, and its capacity to force a response from and recalibration of the larger political environment. Membership figures and votes are only two indictors of organizational strength. The degree of organizational consolidation within the radical right is also relevant, as are effects of violence and protest. Given a particular public climate, right-wing Anti-Immigrant Politics in Europe 141 violence by nonparty actors can make radical right parties appear “moderate.” The strength of radical right parties thus lies partly in their connections to nonparty organizations and partly in their supporters’sociodemographic characteristics. The extent to which immigrants pose real or perceived cultural and interreligious challenges to the nation also conditions these interactions. The chapter begins with an overview of the research on radical-right policy impact that informs this model. It then applies the model to a general mapping of radical right actors across Western Europe and uses these analytic elements to explore six case studies. In Germany and the Netherlands right-wing parties are marginal; but in Germany, acts of right-wing anti-immigrant violence took on a high profile. In France and Belgium, radical right parties are strong but have remained pariahs. The radical right in Austria and Denmark became a partner in the government. State of the Research on Radical Right Impact Many studies have looked at the ideologies and electoral fortunes of radical rightwing parties (see overview in Kitschelt 2007; Mudde 2007); very few have paid more than cursory attention to their impact on the larger political environment in general and on immigration issues in particular. When studied at all, these effects are framed as agenda setting, not as influences on immigrant political incorporation. The analysis of these effects remains an academic lacuna that this article does not claim to fill but does narrow with a systematic cross-country study of these effects. A pioneering article by Martin Schain (1987) demonstrates clear agenda-setting effects by the French Front National (FN) on the attention of other parties and their voters to immigration and security in the 1980s, but it does not address policy effects per se. A study showing how immigration-related legislation increased in volume with the rise of the radical right in Austria, France, and Germany likewise fails to causally link radical right performance and legislative output (Williams 2006). Some tightening of immigration and immigrant policies was observed where parties or individuals of the radical right held executive offices (Minkenberg 2001; Heinisch 2003; Zaslove 2004). But, again, the focus was more on the general policy direction than on immigrants’ political participation and inclusion. Moreover, as shown with regard to Austria (Minkenberg 2001; see also Mudde 2007, 281; Zaslove 2004, 114), immigration...