The Politics of Migration Narratives – In Conversation with Andrew Geddes

Migration is one of the most salient issues in European politics today. While its importance for voting decisions is widely acknowledged, many of its key characteristics remain the subject of vivid debate. Opinions about migration often diverge sharply: Does migration pose a threat to European societies, or is it essential for economic survival? Arepublic attitudes becoming more hostile, or more welcoming? Should European countries restrict migration, or embrace it? Competing narratives seem to strongly shape migration policy and the laws through which it is implemented.

In this conversation, Prof. Andrew Geddes analyzes different narratives on migration and the role they play in policymaking, as well as the rise of right-wing populist actors across Europe. The discussion starts with the question of what narratives are and how they emerge. Prof. Geddes explains that narratives help people make sense of complexities through storytelling, in which plausibility might often matter more than accuracy.However, narratives are also a deeper expression of people’s worldviews and values, through which facts, evidence, and information are filtered. Since worldviews and values are very important to people and often formed early in life, Prof.Geddes points out that narratives tend to be resistant. The frequently made demand that narratives should simply be changed or replaced therefore seems more difficult to realize than is often suggested. The conversation then focuses on the 1990s, a period in which the overall discourse on migration grew more hostile and the narrative of migration as a security threat emerged. At that time, the Austrianpolitician Jörg Haider—often seen as a precursor to today’s right-wing populists—was heavily criticized in European politics. Today, however, his successors exert strong influence on European policymaking, and positions that would have been deemed unacceptable not long ago have entered the mainstream political debate. This shift indicates what many observers describe as the mainstreaming of the far right. However, contrary to what one might discern from public discourse, research by Prof. Geddes and his colleague Prof. James Dennison suggests that European attitudes towardmigration have likely grown more positive over the last thirty years. Their explanation for the rise of anti-immigrant parties in Europe is the sharp increase in the salience of immigration among some voters. While attitudes toward migration may have been more negative decades ago, they were lesselectorally decisive at the time. The constant increase in the salience of migration has thus allowed anti-immigrant parties to win by activating pre-existing opposition to immigration amongst a shrinking segment of the populations of western European states. Prof. Geddes warns that simply tellingpeople who have concerns about immigration—whether legitimate or not—that they are mistaken can harden these positions. Nevertheless, there remains room to shape narratives on migration differently by highlighting the many positive aspects.