FRAMING MIGRATION: POLITICAL PARTIES’ MIGRATION DISCOURSE IN ELECTION CAMPAIGNS SINCE THE MIGRATION CRISIS

Abstract

Since the 2015/2016 ‘refugee crisis’, which saw a sharp increase in the influx of refugees, immigration has become one of the most contested topics in the public and political debate in the European Union (EU). The crisis and the resulting increasing salience of the migration issue have particularly fuelled the political discourse and led to the rise of far-right parties in many member states. This master’s thesis aims to investigate how parties’ framing on migration during election campaigns has developed since the crisis until most recently in 2025. Thereby, the questions of how the migration framing has changed and whether other parties have converged towards the far-right’s anti-immigrant framing, and if so, to what extent, are analysed. This is done by conducting a case study of Germany as a particularly crucial case for the EU. The theory is based on an actor-driven logic, indicating that parties along the political spectrum frame migration with the frames typical for their position along the left-right party spectrum. However, this is expected to change in times of high salience of the issue and under pressure from the far-right, leading to a convergence towards the far-right’s migration framing. To analyse the political discourse, the manifestos of the six most important German parties along the left-right party spectrum from the last three federal elections in 2017, 2021 and 2025 are examined. Thereby, frame analysis and a self-created codebook serve as the method and analytical framework. The results show that especially centre-right parties converge towards the far-right’s migration framing, while also centre-left parties slightly move towards the far-right’s discourse. Furthermore, even left parties adopt frames similar to those of the far-right, indicating the normalisation of the far-right’s position in the political discourse.